Ford Hires Away Executive Leading Apple’s Car Project

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-07/ford-is-said-to-hire-away-executive-leading-apple-s-car-project

by barredo • 5 years ago

129 211 5 years ago

beefman• 5 years ago

stcredzero9• 5 years ago

A lot of people who follow what's been happening with EVs think that certain legacy auto brands will evolve to survive as design and marketing organizations. (EDIT: Of EVs, specifically.) These companies will put their design on top of a skateboard/chassis designed and manufactured by another EV company, like Tesla. If brands don't survive as a separate (EDIT: EV) company, then they could also do this as a division of a parent auto company. This will probably happen to brands like Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini.

Apple stands a good chance of breaking into that evolved form of the business. They are, after all, very good at marketing and design.

BoorishBears10• 5 years ago

It's hilarious reading comments like this.

The car companies that have the supply chains, the know-how, and now the motivation to electrify (the key component previously missing), will somehow defer to Tesla to build their platforms.

If Tesla can figure out how to turn their market cap larger than every other automaker into basic spare parts availability, that will be a starting point.

Also FYI, 2 out of 3 luxury manufacturers you mentioned already do that with established auto manufacturers

The Maserati Ghibli platform can trace its roots to the Chrysler LX platform like most FCA products and is intermixed with Chrysler/Jeep parts

Lamborghinis share platforms with various Audis

Only Ferrari is really putting out really independent platforms

matthewdgreen3• 5 years ago

I don’t know what supply chains the legacy automakers have, but it sure feels like they’re having trouble sourcing efficient batteries.

mhh__4• 5 years ago

I imagine Ferrari customers in particular would enjoy Silicon Valley chic and startup-quality fit and finish of a Tesla.

OnlineGladiator• 5 years ago

The car companies that have the supply chains, the know-how, and now the motivation to electrify

The car companies supply chains are set up for ICE, not EV. Likewise, their know-how is also for ICE, not EV. It's like saying Kodak was in a prime position to take advantage of the digital camera (which they invented), but it was actually the opposite - they'd spent decades optimizing around a separate core technology and couldn't change until it was too late.

I'm not a fan of Tesla for a myriad of reasons and I love cars. But the notion that traditional car companies can magically start cranking out profitable EVs (Tesla made most of their money from tax credits which are essentially gone now) is laughable.

while1fork2• 5 years ago

Koenigsegg does almost everything and has a lot of unique features like all carbon wheels.

stcredzero9• 5 years ago

The car companies that have the supply chains, the know-how, and now the motivation to electrify (the key component previously missing), will somehow defer to Tesla to build their platforms.

That takes some doing, as GM is finding out with the Bolt EV catch-fire recall, costing them many 100's of millions. Even if they can source the batteries, and get to a minimum level of quality and dependability, they will probably still be far behind in terms of margins, power density, and efficiency -- for several years at least.

Also FYI, 2 out of 3 luxury manufacturers you mentioned already do that with established auto manufacturers

Indeed. And at this point, Tesla is the most established EV manufacturer.

mhh__4• 5 years ago

What's in it for Ferrari? Ferrari ship a few thousand cars a year, 10k tops, and much smaller companies already make electric supercars.

arpinum• 5 years ago

14k a year

Dumblydorr• 5 years ago

Tesla isn't doing that and afaik has no plans to do so. They would much rather put their own fully integrated stack right onto their own skateboard and make the full profit. Elon is a huge fan of vertical integration, why would he change to help his competitors?

Skateboards simply aren't that hard to make, the legacy makers will have them within a decade. They won't be as efficient or have large capacity as Tesla, because meanwhile Tesla will keep building on it's technical lead and stay on top for at least a few years, in my estimation.

They'll potentially be lapped by miraculous new battery designs, but with current batteries? Who can top Tesla in the 2020s?

mikepurvis• 5 years ago

I'm also a bit skeptical about the skateboard hype. Like, wasn't this what the legacy auto manufacturers learned in the 90s as competition ramped up from Asia, that it really wasn't worth the diversion of having half a dozen barely-differentiated cars on the same "platform" being badged and marketed in different ways (think Taurus/Sable/Continental, etc).

Basically, all the specs that matter will be coming from the skateboard as far as performance, battery life, handling, and so on. What incentive is there to try to build a new box when someone else is making the chocolates?

devnulll2• 5 years ago

Tesla owns the near term EV space simply due to battery output. Nobody else has, or is making, those investments at sufficient scale.

If Tesla realizes it's more profitable to sell skateboards to BMW, then they'll happily do that. They're a basic capitalist company in that regard.

To what degree will existing automakers get national level protections in order to protect global interests? Germany certainly won't sit by while BMW & MB go under; they'll take some action even if it's forcing Tesla Germany to sell skateboards to BMW. Japan will do something similar to preserve Toyota & Honda, as will China and South Korea.

Disruption will be very interesting in how it plays out...

NortySpock• 5 years ago

Also, sort of related: earliest concepts I've heard of for the Skateboard model of EVs was ~2002 by GM.

https://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2002-10/hy-wire-act/

https://books.google.com/books?id=aQAAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA49&dq=%...

bydo• 5 years ago

Ferarri and Maserati are already part of Fiat. Lamborghini is owned by Volkswagen.

Edit: My mistake, Maserati is owned by Stellantis, which is the parent company of Fiat's parent company, and Ferrari went independent in 2015. So this does still apply to Ferrari.

stcredzero9• 5 years ago

If brands don't survive as a separate company, then they could also do this as a division of a parent auto company.

Someone• 5 years ago

I think it’s more that more and more brands will become just that: brands owned by a much larger group.

There’s a lot of consolidation going on in the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Group already had quite a few brands, but merged with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Chrysler_Automobiles to form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group similarly, has quite a few brands.

Ferrari at sometime was part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Chrysler_Automobiles, the predecessor of PSA group.

Maserati already is part of a larger group. It is owned by Stellantis.

Lamborghini is owned by Audi, which is owned by Volkswagen.

reducesuffering• 5 years ago

Oh man, Stellantis... It's like all the most soon-to-be-obsolete automakers decided to band together to form a last ditch effort in the soon-to-be-EV world but only made it easier to short their collective downfall. Chrysler really never even close to recovered from 2008.

csmeder2• 5 years ago

The sale of Volvo to Geely blows my mind in particular when you realize $1.5b is only 30,000 BTC. Geely bought Volvo for the cost of 6 pizzas [1].

[1] Ford paid $6.5 billion for Volvo in 1999, ten years later, in 2010 10,000 Bitcoins was worth 2 large pizzas, and 8 years later in 2018 Ford sold Volvo to Chinese carmaker Geely for $1.5 billion (30,000 BTC by today's valuation).

gorbypark• 5 years ago

I know it’ll probably never happen but I always thought it would be cool if there was an industry standard (or probably a few for different wheel bases) skateboard to cab interface/mounting points so that one could buy a skateboard from a choice of manufacturers and then pick a cab from another. I’m guessing the skateboard manufacturers would eventually consolidate into just a few, but cab makers could range from cheaper imports all the way up to super high end custom built ones. The ability to upgrade either a skateboard or cab independently from each other would be pretty sweet, too.

xt002• 5 years ago

Would seem likely this is more like "Apple executive finally realizes apple doesn't really want to build a car, so leaves.."

rsj_hn• 5 years ago

Why on earth would Apple want to build a car? Apple wants to make money off of cars by selling devices and software that integrate with cars -- look at the hugely successful CarPlay -- but Apple is not going to manufacture their own cars.

nojito2• 5 years ago

Why not?

A car is basically a computer on wheels theses days.

nickff• 5 years ago

Apple's Carplay may also be their first step in a 'automotive operating system' for partial or full self-driving cars. I could also see them building a 'development kit' car, with documentation to allow 'chassis-builders' and/or 'coach-builders' to create their own customized designs.

nicoburns2• 5 years ago

Why on earth would Apple want to build a car?

From a business perspective, possibly because it's a huge market and Apple has a lot of cash to invest. It's quite different to what they currently do, but they are limited in how much they can expand in their current markets so they're probably going to want to try something new. Entering the phone market was pretty ambitious too (not as ambitious, but they were a much smaller company then), and they were prepared to take their time doing it. I believe precursor forms of the iPhone were in development for over 10 years before it was actually released.

I'm not going to say that Apple will decide to manufacture cars, or that they'd be successful at it if they did decide to. But I wouldn't rule them out either.

enos_feedler5• 5 years ago

The same reason why Apple will probably make a TV even though they have AirPlay. They are different solutions to different problems. AirPlay and CarPlay are all about the iPhone and connecting it to a diverse ecosystem in another product category (TVs, Cars). It increases the value of the phone. Making a TV and making a car are stand alone products that answer the question: can we make a version of this product that is differentiated enough to be meaningful in the market? From a technology standpoint, this means clever integration of hardware, software and services. And beyond that, there are other things too (privacy, etc)

smnrchrds2• 5 years ago

Why on earth would Apple want to build a car?

I am wondering about the same question. Cars are not a high-margin business.

jollybean• 5 years ago

Cars are becoming platforms for software and services, where the differentiation are those things, which Apple is good at.

Apple is so big, they have to look to giant markets to expand into.

At their scale, they should probably always 'be thinking about making a car' because the potentiality is so big, but being prudent enough to say 'no' almost all of the time. To the point that I think it's unlikely they will make one.

They partnered with Motorola just before the iPhone to dip their feet, so watch out for that one, i.e. the fully integrated Fiat, designed by Aplle or something.

mandeepj• 5 years ago

Why on earth would Apple want to build a car?

You would have said something similar if you had heard about Apple's Phone plans back in 2004-2006

shrimpx• 5 years ago

It makes sense from the perspective of Apple consistently being a "personal device" company. A car is another personal device. The more cars become imbibed with computing the closer they get to Apple's core interest.

twobitshifter• 5 years ago

The value of the car market is enormous. If you look at the top 10 industries, cars are the best market for Apple to branch out into. I can’t see them in financial services, construction, or oil/energy.

If you look at previous behemoth companies, like GE, they tried to hit all these industries and overextended. There was GE energy, GE Capital, GE digital, GE Healthcare, GE Transportation systems, GE Aviation, and some part of that made light bulbs. With Apple, they can’t just keep producing phones and grow so the challenge is to break into new neighboring sectors. Their goal with the car was not so much to manufacture it as it was to provide industrial design, branding, and software support as an initial foray. They were turned back by Kia/Hyundai as not bringing enough to the table.

bee_rider• 5 years ago

Maybe they got suckered in by the "autonomous cars are only 5 years out" phase we went through a couple years ago, and figured they could sell rides, rather than cars? Not sure.

Maybe they just try everything because they have infinite money, and don't want to become the next IBM or Microsoft.

while1fork2• 5 years ago

I don't understand why Apple would want to enter the automotive manufacturing business. It's so far-afield from computers, mobile screens, and accessories. TVs, home automation, VR glasses, smart home gym, and audio equipment seem much closer to the product mix than something random like a lawnmower, car, or business jet.

sdze• 5 years ago

And truly I can’t imagine that they earn that kind of money with cars they earn with iPhones and Watches.

Cars are capital intensive products. Also they would need something that really distinguishes them from competitors! Can they compete with the heritage and engineering of say Mercedes-Benz?

Why would they be able to offer a better product? Taking into consideration that they lack dealer ships and service center.

justinlink• 5 years ago

I agree -- aside from passenger airplane manufacturing I can't imagine a more difficult industry to just jump into without really good reason.

If they want to make an "Apple" car with some bells and whistles on it, why not take an existing vehicle and enhance it. See what happens with that at least. I'm thinking like Shelby did with Mustangs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Mustang

Digory• 5 years ago

Strong "JC Penney hires away Ron Johnson from Apple's retail project" vibes.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

Ford is responsible for manufacturing the best-selling vehicles in the US, and has been for years.

snarf21• 5 years ago

Additionally, they are putting out some really impressive EV designs and plans. I think Ford has an even stronger future.

csmeder2• 5 years ago

That's one take. Here is another: "$F holding the Feb 1 1994 resistance as support to the penny so far. Legacy auto gonna need some catalysts as chip shortage will be prolonged and billions in capital needed for EV development." https://twitter.com/JoTrader4/status/1434945782323589123

michelb• 5 years ago

I keep thinking that the ‘car’ project is just one of apple’s many experiments to find/figure out a product but this one is hard to keep invisible because they need more physical space for it. So nobody really knows what it is but you get these glimpses. It must be extremely frustrating that they can’t contain it as they did with the smaller hardware.

MontyCarloHall• 5 years ago

Surely they could’ve done a better job? Test any hardware that cannot be concealed in a secret underground garage, and hardware that can be concealed (e.g. self-driving systems) in cars that look like their streetview vans, which are already bristling with sensors.

gtirloni2• 5 years ago

How's it frustrating to you personally? I don't get it.

usui• 5 years ago

The person isn't saying it's personally frustrating. The person is saying that it must be frustrating for the people in charge or involved with the project, such as an executive who directs the project but then gets poached by Ford.

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

Is it really because of the physical size of the car? I rather think they're unable to keep it secret because of the large amounts of specialized hiring, supply chain talks, etc

ABeeSea• 5 years ago

It’s like Amazon’s Fire Phone in 2012/13 on steroids. So much smoke, so much hiring, so much supply chain rumor. It’s definitely real and something impossible to hide.

paxys• 5 years ago

IMO people's fascination with tech secrecy is also waning in recent years. Apple's "one more thing" reveals used to get worldwide press, now people prefer Elon tweeting Tesla & SpaceX's hardware and software prototypes literally years before launch.

Isthatablackgsd• 5 years ago

TBF, it is not because of the tech secrecy. It is more of they don't have a new toys to show, I mean something that stands out. Tesla and SpaceX are new and those toys that the public want to see. They want to see progress, they don't want to see same old things.

jillesvangurp2• 5 years ago

Apple has been flirting with this topic for quite long and are obviously not succeeding in hitting a formula that makes sense for them, which would be a mass produced premium priced vehicle that people with too much money would prefer over the likes of expensive sports cars, teslas, and what not. It's both obvious and stupendously hard if you've never produced a car before. Tesla is basically the Apple of cars already. They raised the bar quit high for Apple to break into that market and not look like an also ran type product (i.e. like most of Tesla's competition right now).

Rumor has it they were talking to Kia at some point. That does not instill a lot of confidence. Fine cars, but sort of the equivalent of the beige boxes that Apple once competed against when IBM PCs were a thing. Munro did a review on a Kia the other day and the lack of enthusiasm for it was quite obvious. It's not that it was a bad car (he actually liked it, just not for himself) but just a bit boring, bland, and cheap. Alright if that's what you can afford. But kind of not the market Apple is after. Partnering with Kia would be the equivalent of letting Compaq or Dell take care of producing the imac in 1999. It took Steve Jobs to figure out that mess. Better beige boxes weren't the answer and he pretty much axed that first thing into his second round at Apple and rebooted what is now the most valuable company on the planet.

You can see the dilemma here. They basically lack internal skills/knowledge for building a car manufacturing operation and partnering is alien to them. So, how do you create a car with a screen and some fancy Apple experience when you've basically never build a car and your entire vision revolves around what's on that screen? Perhaps they should just outright buy their own car company and get it over with. They are certainly rich enough and there's no lack of suitable companies struggling to survive but yet still competent enough to innovate. I'm surprised they haven't already. Allegedly, they opted out of acquiring Tesla when they had the chance.

qaq2• 5 years ago

Look @ https://www.genesis.com/us/en/2022/genesis-gv70.html & Tesla I would hardly call gv70 a beige box compared to Tesla Y

stncls• 5 years ago

It probably does not affect the cheaper models to the same extent, but Kia's design language has changed quite a bit over the last 5 years.

For example, The Grand Tour's James May was full of praise for the Kia Stinger in 2017 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht1Zh-1q7LU ).

More recently, the Kia Telluride was 2020 "World car of the year". In 2019 it was basically sold out everywhere, and it ended up moving more than double the numbers as the Hyundai Palisade, which is essentially the same car with a different exterior design.

The evolution has been attributed by some to their poaching of European talent, like German car designer Peter Schreyer of Audi TT fame.

Sophistifunk2• 5 years ago

Bollocks. Kias might be made with cheaper materials than Tesla, and they're not as fast, not as "high tech", but you know what? THEY FIT TOGETHER. Tesla isn't the Apple of cars, it's Alienware.

ksec• 5 years ago

I will speculate. The initial rumors of Apple wanted to build a car themselves were not true. It is typical of Apple in their path finding to have expertise and knowledge of how it is built, and how to automate the whole thing along with industry experts. Once they figure this out they start partnering. This is vastly different to most other brands where the whole process is outsourced.

Then the next part is simply Apple thinking their core value has to be experience and AV. Since AV is still years if not decades away. They are only thing left will be in car experience. But is experience really enough to sell cars?

Part of the advantage Apple has with AV is that it requires lots of custom silicons. It is literally a giant iPhone with lots more sensors running on battery around the cities. And Apple has the expertise and scale over pretty much all other players.

But I still dont believe AV will be a thing any time soon. It could be done now if we could get rid of human drivers on the road in some cities. But adding human into the equation is just putting an infinitely variable into it.

ra7• 5 years ago

Tesla is basically the Apple of cars already. They raised the bar quit high for Apple to break into that market and not look like an also ran type product (i.e. like most of Tesla's competition right now).

The Apple of cars is Porsche, not Tesla. Porsche’s design language, desirability, quality and customer service is Apple-like in the car industry. Tesla is the opposite of that. High volume $40k cars with horrendous quality control issues, subpar interior quality and customer service.

Tesla, however, does set the bar high when it comes to being an EV and technology integration. Everything else, not so much.

snowwrestler2• 5 years ago

Apple doesn’t even make computers or phones, they contract out for the manufacturing. Obviously they are never going to manufacture a car.

If they are talking to a company like Kia, it’s not to relabel an existing Kia family sedan. It’s to manufacture a custom Apple design. Whether or not Kia designs nice cars, they know how to manufacture them well (something Tesla is still struggling to figure out).

Who will be the Foxconn of cars? That’s what Apple needs to figure out if they want to bring a car to market.

sangnoir2• 5 years ago

Rumor has it they were talking to Kia at some point. That does not instill a lot of confidence.

Apple will talk to, and partner with anyone in the industry to learn the ropes and eventually stab them in the back/go it alone. The Moto Rokr/iTunes phone didn't instill a lot of confidence either, but it's how Apple learned to navigate the mobile industry, and identify talent to poach, all the while secretly working on the iPhone.

notadoc• 5 years ago

I'm skeptical of the Apple Car project as a casual observer, are the employees too?

vsskanth2• 5 years ago

Just wondering if the exec move is signalling Apple isn't planning on bringing the car to production ?

I'm in the automotive field and I came across some of their job postings, and based on the JD it looked to me like they were pretty serious about bringing something to market.

Me and a bunch of my friends and colleagues were contacted by recruiters and it seemed like they wanted people with experience bringing a car to production.

lifeisstillgood• 5 years ago

This is a good point (you seem downvoted). I am sure Apple is serious. But I suspect Ford is more serious. Self-driving and electric are existential issues for Ford and everything will be thrown at it.

Has Tim Cook indicated in a chat at the bar that maybe Apple is not so serious? I don't know. Has the exec looked at Apple and thought "I don't know how to turn you into a car culture?" Or maybe its all about the Benjamins.

There are a lot of issues at play - I am not sure which I would go for - a possible side-player at the worlds best funded company, or a saviour figure at a company that will have to live on subsidies for a decade? Career choices can be weird

vsskanth2• 5 years ago

From the beginning, Ford can't afford to not be serious since it's literally their core business.

However, something must have changed to convince Doug Fields to move. One can only speculate but I guess it would be revealed later.

machiaweliczny• 5 years ago

geohotz had interesting perspective that Apple car might have hard time reaching mass luxury market that they are know of. I think they might go for AR instead.

bane• 5 years ago

I'm on the side of things where I think Apple realized that electric cars are sorta giant iPhones on wheels and thought they could move into the market if there wasn't already a strong leader. This all made sense when it was clear the technology was there and Tesla wasn't a sure thing, so there was ample competitive room to elbow into.

When Tesla survived and thrived I believe this caused Apple to take a step back and watch how the market plays out for a bit before committing...trying to find out of there really was a play there.

In addition, Tim Cook is a supply-chain guy, and the supply chain for electric vehicles is still very immature and extremely dependent on technology that Apple doesn't really have expertise in (yet), batteries. There's just not a good selection of suppliers for batteries that can produce at Apple's volume needs, and at car scale.

amelius2• 5 years ago

electric cars are sorta giant iPhones on wheels

Except cars can't compete for your attention. Your eyes must be on the road.

Iolaum• 5 years ago

Self driving??

aksss2• 5 years ago

sorta giant iphones on wheels

I think they're giant smart TVs on wheels. Apple is right in complimenting the primary function of the vehicle with an offboard services solution, which replaces the crappy built-in 'smart' platform.

azinman2• 5 years ago

Farley has said Ford’s future depends not on selling cars one at a time, but on selling features to owners to constantly update their cars like they do their phones.

I really disagree with this on so many levels, and I believe the market will ultimately reject it too. When you’re spending tens of thousands on a car, the last thing you want is some optional monthly fee for seat warmers and navigation features. This seems to be driven simply by the desire to have a monthly income versus what consumers actually want.

stingrae• 5 years ago

this sounds like having to go to the dealership and paying for them to give you updated maps for your built-in GPS, a terrible UX.

jabo• 5 years ago

What if upgrades were done over the air, so you didn’t have to go to a dealership. And the base cost of the vehicle comes down, now that there’s a recurring revenue component?

Would that change your mind?

true_religion• 5 years ago

Sure, but what if you are merely leasing the car? In that case, you are already paying a monthly fee, so psychologically adding $30 to it for a navigation system isn’t that big of an ask.

It can even be justified by saying that the car isn’t yours to begin with, so the real owner has a right to charge extra for features that will now incur a maintenance cost due to your use.

Abishek_Muthian2• 5 years ago

and I believe the market will ultimately reject it too.

Na, Remember the time we used to pay once for a software and own it forever?

Hardware manufacturers have been biting their teeth to get those sweet SaaS recurring revenue in anyways possible and EVs have provided a perfect opportunity for the vehicle manufacturers for that.

Future of cars could be irreparable, vendor-locked in(parts), e-waste after 3 years if governments don't strengthen and extend their existing repair laws (if any) for EVs.

But if consumers have to take a stand we have to start with the SaaS products. Something which we might use twice every three months shouldn't be getting monthly payments from us.

amelius2• 5 years ago

Something which we might use twice every three months shouldn't be getting monthly payments from us.

Counter argument will probably be along the lines of "but we store your data even when you don't use it".

Anyway my local gym charges me monthly even if I go there only once a year.

simonh• 5 years ago

Something which we might use twice every three months shouldn't be getting monthly payments from us.

Agreed, but if I pay for my actual usage I'm fine with that. There's no way I'm paying for an Adobe CS monthly sub, but I'd pay a few quid a day to be able to use it as and when. That's not a reliable revenue stream for the vendors though, so I can see why they're not keen on it.

marderfarker2• 5 years ago

Can’t wait to pirate extra horsepower.

pembrook• 5 years ago

Most consumers don’t pay for software at all, though. That’s why all the “pay once for this software-in-a-box” companies basically died except for TurboTax. Saas started in B2B and is still largely a B2B phenomenon.

Consumers buy content subscriptions like Netflix or Spotify, and hardware like phones and laptops, but they largely do not (and will not) pay for software tools. Google/Facebook/Microsoft/etc has trained them this way. And no, HN readers are not normal people, so just because you do, doesn’t mean most people do.

For business customers, a monthly subscription is highly advantageous due to it turning capex into opex on the balance sheet. It reduces the need for onsite IT staff, offloads data security onto an expert 3rd party, and allows for cloud based collaboration and continuous updates—-which “buy it once and use it locally” products never could do.

Saas is a model designed around the needs of B2B, and most big Saas companies make the consumer version free, so I wouldn’t count on consumers caring enough to push back.

pxtail• 5 years ago

Future of cars could be irreparable, vendor-locked in(parts), e-waste after 3 years if governments don't strengthen and extend their existing repair laws (if any) for EVs.

Future is now already for some cars, Nissan Leaf is a good example of this policy - insanely priced or just unavailable batteries make perfectly good cars unusable junk - this is worse than some ICE cars which are still repairable after 15 or 20 years of usage. I'm 100% sure other brands will follow this trend.

011000112• 5 years ago

That depends. Let's say a company wants to sell me an electric vehicle but lease the batteries. I might go for that. Given the way batteries wear out and their expense, it might work out better to pay for them over time while getting periodic upgrades as new tech emerges or the old batteries wear out.

That said, even an electric car wears out. The paint fades, the plastic oxidizes... it's not like I'd expect a modern car to last forever, but I still do favor ownership.

jeffrallen• 5 years ago

Renault has been there and done that with the Zoe. It turns out that the batteries last so long (8 year old Zoe batteries with 200 km on them have 85% capacity still) that battery rental is a very bad deal for consumers, especially those who would like to resell their electric car. Zoe battery lease has been phased out.

reginold5• 5 years ago

One area to question with your assumption is that it's tens of thousands of dollars.

Of course this is true today. But what if an ultralight EV in 2030 only costs $1,000? How does that change your assumptions about market behavior then?

xxs5• 5 years ago

But what if an ultralight EV in 2030 only costs $1,000

What if, we can have faster than light travel. We can't realistically have ultralight anything, unless it's on rails.

megablast3• 5 years ago

It already exists, it’s called a scooter.

mdorazio• 5 years ago

This comment is hilariously reminiscent of ones on this very site when Adobe announced CC would be replacing the old "pay once" software.

trainsplanes• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, yeah.

Company says it's the "future of business" and consumers are pushing for it, not companies. Then one day the company switches over to a new business model to milk us all even more and completely removes any other option. Other big players roll out an identical business plan within days. Cue blog entry/tweet from the company saying people clearly love it since profits are up and they'll never return to allowing customers to just buy a one-off product.

flyinglizard6• 5 years ago

I agree the customer doesn’t always have the last say, especially if all market players move decisively and quickly enough.

That said, Adobe has a much more influential market position where it is than Ford or any auto maker does; and Adobe didn’t slap a recurring fee on top of the one time purchase price but made the full shift to a service model.

It is quite reasonable that automakers do the same transition. Most of the people finance their cars anyway, so they pay monthly. Just move the financing burden to the automaker and add usage/features flexible billing and there you have it. Nowhere as objectionable.

xvector• 5 years ago

Interestingly, looking at the original thread on CC [1], most of the top comments on HN were quite positive:

I'm looking forward to switching to Creative Cloud at work [...] Going CC-only makes sense for business.
I love Adobe CC. I would consider it the first thing Adobe has done right in a long time.
I've been using CC since it came out [...] it's fantastic [...] They've really turned around and made this pirate into a customer.
I think it's a great move and will benefit independent designers and creators hugely.
I think the subscription model is far superior.

A minority of users were frustrated and made flat-out incorrect predictions, as you mentioned:

Adobe just priced themselves solidly out of the prosumer market.
I wonder if Adobe abandoning traditional software licensing will spur new free software development.
I hope antitrust regulators will look at Adobe with more scrutiny.
Adobe is going to lose plenty of money and customers over this.

But again, these were by far the minority, even on HN. I would say that opposition to the subscription model has actually increased quite a bit since Adobe's announcement nearly a decade ago.

Internet history is fun!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663581

megablast3• 5 years ago

I switched from photoshop to gimp.

megablast3• 5 years ago

You will pay for updates maps, tracking, instant service, etc...

the8472• 5 years ago

With autonomous automobiles subscriptions may be inevitable. They're more expensive, need updates and are better operated as a fleet. And if they depress the number of units sold that may drive prices up further thus making subscription more affordable for most.

But until that happens you can choose to just not use the premium options.

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

Well it all depends on how much it costs. If the buying price is reduced enough, an additional subscription may be interesting. It’s similar to leasing your car instead of buying, which a lot of people do.

tharne• 5 years ago

I really disagree with this on so many levels, and I believe the market will ultimately reject it too.

I wish this were true, but unfortunately, I think too many consumers don't think critically when making purchases, even on things as large as cars, and that's exactly why we see the proliferation of this awful subscription for everything model. Just look at how most people buy cars. Every ad and salesman talks about "How much do you want to pay per month?". And most people are fine with that line of reasoning, when even a little bit of thinking reveals how dumb it is. I'm fine with a $6,000 a month payment, for example, so long as the duration of the loan is two months. Likewise, a $400 a month payment on a used car can look quite reasonable, unless you're looking at an 84 month loan at 3.5% interest.

Looked at in isolation, the amount of the monthly payment is irrelevant when it comes to the actual cost of the car, but that's all most folks look at, and that's exactly why car salesmen love it.

It makes me shudder even more when people talk about house purchases. I heard someone say something like, "I bought a $350,000 house with $50,000 down". No, at 3.5% interest on a 30-year mortgage you just bought a $534,968 house with $50,000 down. But you can bet your life that it was sold to them as, "A beautiful home for only $X dollars a month".

sangnoir2• 5 years ago

I really disagree with this on so many levels, and I believe the market will ultimately reject it too. When you’re spending tens of thousands on a car, the last thing you want is some optional monthly fee for seat warmers and navigation features.

Remember when Tesla temporarily unlocked extra range on their (existing) customer's cars because of a hurricane? Software-mediated market segmentation is already here, and has been for a while - I think binned microprocessors are the earliest example I can think of.

killingtime74• 5 years ago

Don’t many/most consumers finance their cars? New cars anyway? So they already pay monthly

cyanydeez• 5 years ago

its driven by elon musk.

smas35427• 5 years ago

Can some here talk about Ulrich taking his place at Apple and possible link between Apple and Canoo?

ryzvonusef• 5 years ago

Is Doug Field the "Jim Keller" of the EV world?

Ford Hires Away Executive Leading Apple’s Car Project

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