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antonius | 9 years ago

Mansfield has a successful track record with respect to Apple products.

With that said, this is his most difficult challenge to date and I'm not sure how successful he and the company as a whole will be given the difficulties of bringing an autonomous car to market.

discuss

arjunrc|9 years ago

I believe the goal here is an electric car with autonomous features, branded similar to the S-Class or the new E-Class (instead of going all the way like Tesla's AutoPilot).

pgodzin|9 years ago

What's the point of that? Why would Apple want to make such a huge bet on an industry they have never been in just to create an incremental improvement on cars already billed as luxury items?

If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle.

scoot|9 years ago

> "instead of going all the way like Tesla's AutoPilot"

The name "AutoPilot" is misleading - it's anything but. An advanced lan-assist, sure, but compared to google, Tesla's technology is very far from going all the way.

ams6110|9 years ago

I am guessing not a full EV but a hybrid.

Full EVs still have competitive vulnerability in range and refueling time. And they likely will for the next decade at least. It's the reason that EVs are still off the table for me.

Something in an innovative hybrid, like a Volt but better designed, would be much more interesting to me.

mikeryan|9 years ago

I don't believe that at all.

I'd guess fully autonomous and fully electric. I mean everyone here can see the writing on the wall that this kind of thing that is going to happen. If I'm Apple I skate to where the puck is going to be.

thevibesman|9 years ago

I have a feeling Apple might be working on a completely autonomous design; one that would not be legal to be tested on public roads due to current laws requiring human UI elements such as steering wheels and pedals.

boznz|9 years ago

Source? Only rumor and speculation on the internet at the moment

dexwiz|9 years ago

Apple's goal is to make the first well polished version on the market, and then claim they invented it. Looking at MP3Players/Smartphones/TabletsWithPens.