Kuo Says Apple Car Won’t Launch Until 2025 – 2027 At the Earliest

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple won’t launch a vehicle until 2025-2027 at the earliest. Kuo’s investor note follows a Reuters report that claimed that Apple is targeting 2024 to begin production of a passenger vehicle with ‘next level’ battery technology.

We predicted in a previous report that Apple will launch Apple Car in 2023–2025 […] However, our latest survey indicates that the current development schedule of Apple Car is not clear, and if development starts this year and everything goes well, it will be launched in 2025–2027 at the earliest. Due to changes in the EV/self-driving market and Apple’s high-quality standards, we would not be surprised if Apple Car’s launch schedule is postponed to 2028 or later.

After the Reuters report, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that he had tried to sell the company to Apple but Tim Cook refused to take the meeting. He also said that the monocell described by Reuters was electrochemically impossible.

Kuo reminds investors that Apple isn’t always successful when it enters a market. He says that if Apple Car is to succeed, it will depend on big data and AI, not hardware.

The market has high expectations for Apple Car. Still, we remind investors that although Apple has a variety of competitive advantages, it is not always successful in new business. For example, Apple failed to enter the smart speaker market. The demand for HomePod and HomePod mini were lower than expected, and the development of new smart speaker models had been temporarily suspended. The competition in the EV/self-driving car market is fiercer than that for smart speakers, so we think it’s perilous to jump to the conclusion that Apple Car will succeed.

If Apple Car wants to succeed in the future, the key success factor is big data/AI, not hardware. One of our biggest concerns about Apple Car is that when Apple Car is launched, the current self-driving car brands will have accumulated at least five years of big data and be conducive to deep learning/AI. How does Apple, a latecomer, overcome this lagging gap?

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