Why Apple is the LAST company I want making cars
Reports say the iCar could be in production by 2028
I remember the first time I ever held an iPhone. I was at university at the time and one of my friends, Kelvin, had bought one during the mid semester break.
It was totally different to anything I’d ever seen before. Kelvin showed me the touch screen, told me it was connected to the internet, explained apps.
I held the future in my hand in that moment.
I distinctly remember thinking: “Eh. It’ll never take off” and passing it back.
Sometimes I wish I’d been right.
As you might already be aware, Apple is in the process of making a car. For all that it was meant to be secret, we’ve known about their foray into the motoring world for a while.
Apparently, they’ve seen themselves as a potential competitor to Tesla since 2015 and have been working on making an electric car under the code name ‘Project Titan’ ever since.
It was said that the original plans were for a fully self-driving car that would be in production by the end of 2024. It would have no steering wheel or pedals and be capable of ferrying passengers around like a big, happy potatoes.
It turns out that goal might was a bit ambitious.
According to a recent Bloomberg story which quotes ‘insiders’, they’ve now scaled that back to a car which does have a steering wheel. And pedals. And you’ll still have to drive it a bit. Also it won’t be ready until 2028.
That’s if it makes it to market at all. There are no guarantees.
Personally I hope it doesn’t.
Afterall, Apple is the company who intentionally throttled the speed of their old phones to force people to upgrade. Who glued computer batteries to the casing so they couldn’t be replaced. Who made it almost impossible for third-party repairs.
For two decades we’ve been primed by Apple to discard expensive tech when it breaks or is no longer the newest and shiniest version of itself. Don’t replace your phone battery, throw the whole thing out instead! Don’t sell it, who’d want it? Get something new, you deserve it!
Thanks to the app store, we’ve also become accustomed to renting, rather than owning. You used to buy movies, music, software, and programs. Now you have subscriptions. A thousand of them. It seemed like a good trade for convenience at the time. Now I’m not so sure.
For the moment at least, this is not a model people tolerate in cars.
Remember when BMW made using the seat warmers in their cars an $18 per month subscription service? Customers were so incensed the German car maker scrapped the program in September last year.
This did not fly because we are used to owning our vehicles in their entirety.
But when it comes to EVs, the distinction between cars and gadgets gets blurry. This makes them the perfect Trojan Horse for the kind of fuckery we have with our smart phones.
And who better to push that wooden nag through the gates than Apple? Afterall, they are the company who turned planned obsolescence into an artform. Who sold us expensive devices and then forced us to agree to their onerous Terms and Conditions before we could use them.
Frankly, I would prefer to drive an asbestos car made by James Hardy than an iCar made by Apple.
And yes. It is also not lost on me that I am typing this very sentence on a MacBook with an iPhone nestled under my right buttcheek and an iWatch on my wrist.
Hating the manner in which Apple operates while simultaneously enjoying their products is a modern conundrum. But strangely there’s a section of an 1855 Walt Whitman poem which elegantly sums this problem up nicely:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I contain multitudes is a wonderful sentence. Personally, I like using it because it makes my hypocrisy feel classy.
The truth is I don’t always know how to navigate this modern world. I rage against the currents but they sweep me up anyway.
Perhaps you feel the same way, too.
There’s not much to be done I’m afraid. We’ll just have to do our best to float and hope the tides deposit us somewhere nice.
I’ll see you next week.
Steph