So, what does Apple have that carmakers would need? Not manufacturing expertise. Except for a manufacturing facility outside Austin that makes extremely-high end Mac desktops, Apple doesn't make any of its products. Foxconn makes the iPhone for Apple on a contract basis. So, Apple only offers something that the credulous buffoons who “follow” Tesla on the sell-side attempt to goose their TSLA price targets with: economic value attributed to ’’connectivity.”
This is jaw-droppingly stupid. NO one is EVER going to pay for connectivity in a car because we already have it. Your iPhone or Android smartphone gives you the ability to navigate, recreate and conversate (hopefully safely) on a hands-free, seamless basis in virtually every car made on planet Earth in 2020. So, why would anyone pay extra for, as one particularly credulous buffoon out it while posting an astronomical TSLA price target “the internet of the car?”
No one will. The internet of the car already exists, and you already own it. It’s your phone.
Of course, there are higher-level uses for connected cars when autonomous driving and vehicle fleet interactions (V2X) are considered. These would cut down on traffic jams and reduce accidents, in theory, because computers are smarter than people. But that market is still in its pre-revenue phase, and despite what idiots who pump TSLA shares would have you believe, Tesla is not even in the Top 5 globally. Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox, and China’s Didi Chuxing and Baisu are light years ahead of Tesla’s autonomous technology. UBER’s self-driving project was basically an epic fail, but my Silicon Valley contacts tell me some useful tech was developed,and that will be fully utilized now that unit has been bought by Aurora.
But Tesla doesn't have it. Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” vaporware has been foisted on unsuspecting consumers to flatter Tesla’s revenue line, Musk will tweet out “FSD updates” as every quarter comes to a close simply so Tesla can recognize more of the revenues from customer FSD deposits on a percentage-of-completion basis. It’s a joke to folks in the auto industry.
