If Apple does continue with an electric car, Volkswagen will not worry about it. According to Reuters, Said VW CEO Herbert Diess Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview that his company ‘was not afraid’ of an Apple car. The automotive industry is not a technology sector that you can take over with a single stroke, the CEO said. Whatever Apple brought to the table, it would not dominate ‘overnight’.
Diess said it would make sense for Apple to enter the field as it has skills in batteries, design and software. Rumors suggest that Apple is betting on a ‘breakthrough’ battery design that offers more range. It can also be safer and more ethical by dropping the use of cobalt (sometimes mined with child labor). LiDAR and other technologies can self-manage it.
Apple faces numerous obstacles to putting a car into production. In addition to the challenges of making an advanced EV with autonomy, it also has to set up partners if it is not going to manufacture the cars or components itself – and Hyundai has just said that it is no longer talking to Apple about teamwork. The reported 2024 target is still years away, and any technology that is now revolutionary can be modest by now.
At the same time, VW may not want to get too comfortable. Do you remember how Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in 2006 that Apple “is not just going to step into the smartphone business”? And remember what happened to Palm? Apple has a history of shaking up the competitive landscape when it enters a product category. While VW certainly has a stronger position in electric cars than Palm in phones, it may not want to accept that its position is unusable.