What Killed the Apple Car? - YouTube

This is not the Apple car, because officially it never existed. And now it never will. Ten years after starting work on a car, Apple has given up. The company had some wild ideas about the future of the car, as we're about to tell you. The vehicle was supposed to be as revolutionary as the iPhone. Carmakers were running scared. The iPhone had eviscerated massive businesses like Nokia and Motorola. What if Apple did the same to the car industry? They really felt this strong confidence. They could take out general motors. They could make a better Tesla. And they had this ambition to do something that really had not been done before. It was never going to work. This is a tale of grandiose plans to invent a new kind of car, undone by strategic mistakes. The rise, fall, rise, and then death of what was codenamed Project Titan.

这不是苹果汽车，因为从官方来说它从未存在过。现在也永远不会存在了。在着手研发汽车十年后，苹果放弃了。公司曾有一些关于汽车未来的疯狂想法，接下来我们会告诉您。这辆车本应像iPhone一样革命性。汽车制造商感到紧张。iPhone把诺基亚和摩托罗拉等巨头击败了。如果苹果对汽车行业也采取同样的方式会怎样？他们确实有强烈的信心。他们可以击败通用汽车。他们可以打造一个更好的特斯拉。他们有这种雄心，想要做一些以前从未做过的事情。但这从来都不可能成功。这是一个关于制定一种新型汽车的宏伟计划，被战略性错误搞砸的故事。所谓的“泰坦计划”的崛起，衰落，再次崛起，然后死亡。

Apple is incredibly secretive. The company doesn't talk about new products until they're ready, so never publicly admitted to working on a car. In fact, the closest that Apple CEO Tim Cook ever got to doing so was in this interview with me in 2017. There is a major disruption looming. He proceeded to lay out three innovations that he predicted would upturn the car industry. The first was electric vehicles. If you've driven an all-electric car, it's actually a marvelous experience. Plus, you have ridesharing on top of this. So services like Uber and Lyft and finally, self-driving cars. We're focusing on autonomous systems. Clearly one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars. We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. Each of those technologies seem to present an opportunity to disrupt the $2 trillion car industry.

苹果公司极度保密。该公司不会在产品准备就绪之前谈论新产品，所以从来没有公开承认正在研发汽车。事实上，苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克从未公开谈论过这一点，除了在2017年与我进行的这次采访中。 一场重大的颠覆正在逐渐显现。他继续阐述了三项创新，他预测将颠覆汽车工业。第一项是电动车。如果你曾驾驶过一辆电动汽车，那实际上是一种奇妙的体验。此外，您还可以享受顶级的顺风车服务。因此，像Uber和Lyft这样的服务，最后是自动驾驶汽车。我们专注于自主系统。显然，自主系统的一个目的是自动驾驶汽车。我们将其视为所有人工智能项目的母体。每一项技术似乎都提供了颠覆价值2万亿美元汽车行业的机会。

Initially, for the rationale behind the car was what Apple does, delivering a piece of hardware. And the car is that piece of hardware. And then built on top of that hardware that becomes a platform to deliver services and experiences. So in that respect, the car followed the Apple strategy. Let's scroll back to 2014, when it all started three years before my interview with Cook. The beginning of the Apple Car Project was actually the company exploring if it should buy Tesla. They ended up not doing that and instead decided to start exploring what it would take to build their own car on their own. They put some of the brightest minds at the company on this. The hardware division was granted billions of dollars in funding. To hire anyone that needed Inside Apple or Outside Apple, they hired people from Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi, you name it. To come over there and build a car. Johnny Ive, Apple's design chief at the time, had this idea to recreate the old school boat swag and busts from the 1950s and the 1960s.

最初，苹果汽车的理念是向苹果所做的事情看齐，提供一款硬件产品。而汽车就是那个硬件产品。然后在这个硬件基础上构建平台，用于提供服务和体验。因此，在这个层面上，汽车遵循了苹果的战略。让我们回溯到2014年，那是在我采访库克之前的三年。苹果汽车项目的起步实际上是公司探索是否应该收购特斯拉。最终他们没有这样做，而是决定开始探索如何独立打造他们自己的汽车。他们将公司中一些最聪明的头脑放在了这个项目上。硬件部门获得了数十亿美元的资金支持。为了聘请任何需要的人，无论是在苹果内部还是外部，他们从保时捷、兰博基尼、奥迪等公司挖掘人才过来构建汽车。当时的苹果设计主管乔尼·伊夫（Johnny Ive）有了这个想法，要重新打造上世纪50年代和60年代的老派船舶风格和外观。

The idea was not to build a car for people who love cars today, but build the future of the car. All sorts of ideas are thrown around. They consider only selling the car in white. There would be no steering wheel or front facing seats and passengers would control everything with touch screens and Siri. For all the big ideas in blue sky thinking, however, the project soon starts to hit problems and there's confusion over whether the priority should be to compete with Tesla in electric cars or Google, which was making big leaps in self-driving vehicles. By 2016, there was a ton of disagreement on the Apple executive team. There were difficulties figuring out a way to actually produce the vehicle. There were concerns over profits.

这个想法并不是为了制造一辆给目前喜爱汽车的人使用的车，而是为了打造未来的汽车。各种各样的想法被提出来。他们考虑只销售白色的车。汽车将没有方向盘或朝前座椅，乘客将通过触摸屏和Siri控制一切。然而，在这种大胆构想的背景下，项目很快开始遇到问题，关于优先任务是与特斯拉在电动汽车领域竞争还是与谷歌竞争，后者在自动驾驶车辆方面取得了重大进展存在困惑。到2016年，苹果公司高管团队存在着大量分歧。他们很难找到一种实际生产汽车的方法。他们担心利润问题。

Enter Bob Mansfield, a semi-retired executive who had developed products such as the MacBook Air. It's the first of many leadership and direction changes to hit the project. Hiddle and tail laying off hundreds of engineers. Mansfield tells them that rather than building a car, Apple will focus on developing the most advanced driverless technology, Level 5 Autonomy. By building the self-driving brain, they really gave themselves options. On one hand, they were able to partner. They talked partnerships with Tesla, with Mercedes Benz, with BMW. But it also gave them opportunity to later go back to build their own car and have this Apple-like experience. Apple also invests in Diddy, the Chinese equivalent of Uber, so it might one day put its self-driving technology into Diddy's ride-sharing service. The company plows ahead with testing and reports start coming in of Lexus test cards kitted out with Apple's driverless technology appearing on the roads of California in 2017.

鲍勃·曼斯菲尔德进入了这个项目，他是一位半退休的高管，曾开发出像MacBook Air这样的产品。这是项目中的第一个领导和方向变化。希德尔和泰尔裁员数百名工程师。曼斯菲尔德告诉他们，苹果将把焦点放在开发最先进的无人驾驶技术，即5级自动驾驶技术。通过开发自动驾驶的大脑，他们真的给自己打开了选择的大门。一方面，他们能与其他公司合作。他们与特斯拉、奔驰和宝马谈及合作。但这也给了他们将来可以再自己建造汽车并且拥有苹果式体验的机会。苹果还投资于滴滴，相当于中国的优步，以便将自动驾驶技术投入滴滴的共享出行服务。公司继续推进测试，在2017年加利福尼亚的道路上开始出现了配备苹果无人驾驶技术的雷克萨斯测试车的报告。

Fast forward two years to 2019. Uber goes public and it's a big disappointment that shows ride-sharing isn't a great business with no prospect of Apple-like profits. So one of Cook's three pillars starts to look a little bit less revolutionary. At the same time, Tesla goes from a $50 billion valuation to a trillion-dollar company in less than two years. Electric vehicles suddenly seem more appealing. I think the early success of Tesla led people to believe that maybe there was opportunity in the car industry to work with bigger margins. That helps give Apple the confidence to make another pivot. Around that time, Doug Field, the Tesla executive who developed the Model 3 and took over the Apple Car Project in 2017 calls a meeting to show off what his team has been able to pull together.

快进到2019年。优步上市了，结果却令人大失所望，表明共乘出行并非一个前景光明、能够获得像苹果那样的利润的好生意。库克的三大支柱中的一个开始显得不太具革命性。与此同时，特斯拉在不到两年的时间里，市值从500亿美元增长到了1万亿美元。电动汽车突然变得更具吸引力。我认为，特斯拉的早期成功让人们相信，在汽车行业有机会实现更高利润率。这有助于给了苹果信心再次转变方向。就在这个时候，2017年接管苹果汽车项目的特斯拉执行官道格·菲尔德召集了一次会议，展示了他的团队所取得的成就。

Apple has this secretive, several hundred acre test facility in the heart of the Arizona Desert outside of Phoenix. They've gathered a bunch of senior people on the Apple Car team alongside Tim Cook and others. Cook is impressed by what he sees, according to people who were present, and says he'll finally throw his full weight behind the project. Apple will build an electric car that has full driverless technology. But even that decision doesn't last long. Field leaves to join Ford in 2021 and is replaced by Kevin Lynch, a longtime Apple manager who worked on the watch. What's your plan, car? It's becoming clear that autonomous cars are a long way away, maybe even a decade or more, so there's another flip-flop away from self-driving tech.

苹果在亚利桑那州凤凰城外的沙漠中心拥有一个保密的几百英亩测试设施。他们在苹果汽车团队中聚集了一群资深人员，包括蒂姆·库克等人。在场的人说，库克对所见的一切印象深刻，并表示将全力支持这个项目。苹果将建造一辆配备完全无人驾驶技术的电动汽车。但即使这个决定也没有持续太久。Field在2021年离开加入福特，由长期在苹果任职并参与手表开发的凯文·林奇接任。你的计划是什么，汽车？变得越来越明显，无人驾驶汽车还有很长的路要走，甚至可能需要十年甚至更久的时间，所以又一次远离了自动驾驶技术。

It's the least ambitious version of the project yet, make an electric car that competes directly with Tesla. But by 2023, the outside world is changing. Artificial intelligence starts consuming the tech industry. And after Tesla's early successes, electric vehicles are facing a reality check. November 2022 saw the release of ChatGPT. As the world goes AI crazy, Google has its own big AI division, and Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. And while there's plenty of AI innovation under the hood of Apple's products, it's still unclear what Tim Cook's big, generative AI play will be.

这是有关该项目迄今为止最不雄心勃勃的版本，制造一辆可以直接与特斯拉竞争的电动汽车。但到了2023年，外部世界正在发生变化。人工智能开始占据科技行业。在特斯拉早期取得成功之后，电动汽车正在面临现实检验。2022年11月发布了ChatGPT。随着世界对人工智能的疯狂追捧，谷歌拥有自己庞大的人工智能部门，微软是ChatGPT的开发者OpenAI的最大投资者。虽然苹果产品在底层集成了大量人工智能创新，但目前还不清楚蒂姆·库克的大型生成式人工智能计划会是什么样的。

Where Apple needs to catch up is in the interface between the consumer and the generative AI engine that has a name like Copilot or Gemini. And the electric vehicle market is starting to lose its luster, with sales growth slowing. For three reasons. EVs are expensive, and high-interest rates mean they're even harder to afford. The first generation of EVs are now hitting the second-hand market, and they're not holding their value as well as combustion engine cars. Established car makers are starting to release their EV models, meaning competition is tougher, and profits are lower. One specific part of Apple's success is bet on the hardware side they have. By and large between 25 and 30 percent margin, that is impossible on a car. All of this provokes another final rethink at Apple. The three megatrends that Cook highlighted in 2017 have all lost their appeal. Self-driving isn't happening anytime soon. Ride sharing isn't a great business, and electric vehicles probably can't deliver the kinds of profits that Apple shareholders expect. They have some of the world's best minds on artificial intelligence working on this system that may never come to light because it is so difficult.

苹果需要赶上的地方是在消费者和生成式人工智能引擎之间的界面，这个引擎的名字像Copilot或Gemini。而电动汽车市场开始失去光彩，销售增长放缓有三个原因。电动汽车很昂贵，高利率意味着更难负担得起。第一代电动汽车现在进入了二手市场，它们的价值保持不如燃油汽车。传统汽车制造商开始推出他们的电动汽车模型，意味着竞争更加激烈，利润更低。苹果成功的一个具体部分是他们在硬件方面的押注。总体来说，25%至30%的利润率，在汽车上是不可能的。所有这些都引发了苹果的另一次思考。库克在2017年强调的三大趋势已经失去吸引力。自动驾驶不会很快出现。共享出行不是一个很好的业务，而电动汽车可能无法提供苹果股东所期待的利润。他们拥有世界上最优秀的人工智能专家在研发这个可能永远不会问世的系统，因为这是如此困难。

On the other hand, they have this separate AI team trying to catch up to open AI and Microsoft and Google on generative AI. So Tim Cook makes a big decision. On February 26, after most people have left work, the car team gets an email announcing an all-hands meeting the next day. When people started to realize something is up, then 10am the next morning, they all gathered into conference rooms and around their desks and they tuned in to a video announcement. It was a 12-minute presentation. They were pretty succinct. Thank you for all your efforts. We're immediately winding down Project Titan. The Apple car is dead. As working on self-driving technology will join Apple's main AI group, the rest have to find new jobs inside or outside the company.

另一方面，他们有一个独立的人工智能团队正在努力赶上开放AI、微软和谷歌在生成式人工智能方面的发展。因此，蒂姆·库克做出了一个重大决定。2月26日，在大多数人下班后，汽车团队收到一封电子邮件，宣布第二天举行全员大会。当人们开始意识到出现了什么问题时，第二天上午10点，他们都聚集在会议室和办公桌周围，收看视频公告。这是一个12分钟的演讲。他们讲得相当简洁。感谢大家的努力。我们立即停止泰坦项目。苹果汽车宣告终结。致力于自动驾驶技术的团队将加入苹果的主要人工智能团队，其余人员需要在公司内部或外部找到新工作。

Repurposing the people that were working on Project Titan to AI makes sense given the opportunity in AI. It solves a lot of problems for Apple. It gets a bunch of top AI minds working on its main AI goals, and it can reallocate the billions of dollars a year it's spending on the car towards developing AI. Tech could be essential to the future success of the iPhone, the device that still accounts for the majority of Apple's revenue. Look at this chart. After years of massive growth, Apple is struggling to grow revenue.

将曾经从事泰坦计划的人员转移到人工智能领域是合乎逻辑的，考虑到人工智能领域的机遇。这对于苹果来说解决了许多问题。它让一大批顶尖的人工智能专家投入到主要的人工智能目标中，同时可以将每年花费在汽车上的数十亿美元重新分配到人工智能研发中。技术可能对iPhone的未来成功至关重要，这款设备仍然占据着苹果绝大部分收入。看看这张图表。经过多年的高速增长，苹果现在面临着增长收入的困难。

Without the car, investors are wondering where the next leg of growth will come from. Something that could be the Vision Pro. The problem is that if that device achieves everything Apple wants over the next few years, Apple could end up replacing the iPhone you may not own both. It's something that has the real potential in the next half decade to replace your iPhone, to be the future of that product. But Apple needs supplementary revenue. They need wholly new product categories that don't take away from others.

没有了汽车，投资者们正猜测下一波增长将从何而来。或许就是Vision Pro。问题在于，如果这款设备在接下来的几年里实现了苹果想要的一切，那么苹果可能会取代你所拥有的iPhone。未来的五年内，这款产品有着真正的潜力来取代你的iPhone，成为这款产品的未来。但是苹果需要额外的收入。他们需要全新的产品类别，而不是从其他地方抢夺市场份额。

And as car makers start to question just how profitable the electric vehicle market can be, the fact that Apple has given up is hardly a vote of confidence.

随着汽车制造商开始质疑电动汽车市场的盈利性，苹果放弃参与这一市场几乎不能令人信心满满。