EV News: Apple Drops 'iCar,' Ford Scrambles To Develop Cheap EVs Before China Eats Its Lunch
New directions in EV market? Time for more 'nobody wants EVs' nonsense!
Ford has apparently decided to move toward making small, affordable EVs instead of the high-profit trucks and SUVs that in recent years became its almost exclusive focus. Also, in a big disappointment to a lot of Apple nerds, Apple has abandoned development of its own EV project, maybe because people kept trying to recharge it with a USB-C cable instead of Apple’s bespoke connecter. (Just a joke! There’s no car to try to charge!)
Ford Thinks Small Is Beautiful Again
Ford’s shift toward small EVs is a pretty big change, especially after the company’s 2018 decision to go all in on trucks and stop making passenger cars other than the gas-powered Mustang, starting in the 2021 model year. The high profit margins on the company’s big damn pickups and SUVs got Ford through the pandemic and the chaos of post-pandemic supply chain mess, and they really made investors happy in the stock market.
Ford’s initial EV models were the impressive but huge and spendy F-150 Lightning pickup and the crossover SUV “Mustang” Mach-E, which is a nice family-sized vehicle but also on the pricey side.
But high interest rates have hurt the market for behemoth gas powered pickups and wankpanzers, so Ford CEO Jim Farley believes the future has to be small EVs, as he said at the “Wolfe Research Global Auto Conference” in New York this week, even if we have no idea who Wolfe is. From the paywalled Automotive News via the not-paywalled InsideEVs:
Farley said the company made that decision because the economics on smaller vehicles makes more sense for consumers.
"What the customer has now said to us is, if you have [an EV] larger than Escape, it better be really functional or a work vehicle," Farley said. "But if you do the economics for a vehicle, let's say the Escape or smaller, it's totally different, it completely works. In fact, it's dramatically better operating cost than a Corolla or Civic or even a Maverick."
Farley said smaller, cheaper EVs are needed to compete with Chinese automakers, which the head of Ford's EV unit this week labeled a "colossal strategic threat." Those companies sell large numbers of EVs in China and are expected to eventually enter the U.S. market.
And when they do, boy howdy. So far, a 25 percent tariff on Chinese cars has kept Chinese EVs out of the US, but the Chinese company BYD, which last year passed Tesla as the biggest seller of EVs, is looking for locations for a plant in Mexico, although officially that’s only for the purpose of selling its cars in Mexico. So far.
As InsideEVs editor Patrick George points out, though, US automakers have always had trouble competing against imports in the US small car market, and that’s why nobody wrote love songs about the Pinto or the Dodge Omni, sorry. And as a strategy for the transition to EVs, he adds,
American automakers are increasingly realizing that trying to win with size—big, expensive EVs with big, expensive batteries—won't be sustainable for anyone involved here. […]
And if EVs are to catch on here, it's looking increasingly likely that a small, cheap Toyota Corolla-esque vehicle will help accelerate that trend. Will the American automakers even be able to compete that way? Do they have what it takes? All of those remain open questions.
And maybe this time around it’ll work for Ford; as George points out, Farley has made some smart choices like leading the US car manufacturers’ switch to Tesla’s “NACS” charging plug, which will be the standard for all companies starting in 2025, making charging more standardized. So now we’ll see if Ford can make small EVs well, too. Hope so!
Apple Logs Out Of Car Market
Bloomberg broke the news this week that Apple will shut down its secret “Special Projects Group” that was trying to build a car company to rival Tesla, but never quite figured out what exactly the car was going to be, exactly:
The decision to ultimately wind down the project is a bombshell for the company, ending a multibillion-dollar effort called Project Titan that would have vaulted Apple into a whole new industry. The tech giant started working on a car around 2014, setting its sights on a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a limousine-like interior and voice-guided navigation.
But the project struggled nearly from the start, with Apple changing the team’s leadership and strategy several times. […]
Apple was still years away from producing a car and contemplated many different designs. Beyond the look of the vehicle, cracking self-driving technology was a major challenge. Apple had road-tested its system since 2017 using a Lexus SUV exterior, putting dozens of vehicles on roads in the US. The company also tested more secretive components on a gigantic track in Phoenix that was once owned by Chrysler.
The decision was probably also partly in response to uncertainty in the EV market, which is still growing but not as rapidly as it had been when it seemed like everybody and their robot dog was starting an EV company. As Bloomberg notes, Apple at one time considered making a fully autonomous car that wouldn’t even have a steering wheel or pedals, but dropped that. I remember all the jokes on Twitter about being driven around in a windowless box that, if need be, could also be repurposed as a coffin.
Now Apple will have to figure out how else to keep raking in billions (AI of course), and will still have a toe in the car business with its CarPlay software, which may actually end up being adopted by more automakers now that they won’t be competing with Apple as a car maker.
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please subscribe, or if a one time donation works better for you, here is the magic button to do that:
The golden hour, Manhattan. The Hudson River is very calm this evening.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-50860574?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
Apple is much better off writing reliable software for EVs -- doing well something it already does well -- and then letting others make the cars. Sure that's the classic Android approach rather than classic iPhone, but cars desperately need reliability. If they can pair a solid software system with pre-approved components to handle specific tasks, they can cut risks, limit the development problems to things they know how to do, eliminate the capital costs associated with major manufacturing efforts, and use the Apple brand to charge more for whatever subsystem they focus on (drive-by-wire or the entertainment system or dash information display or battery management or whatever), maximizing profitability.
It's the smart play, so of course Apple won't bother trying it.