Apple Backs Away From the EV Business
A Ten Year, Billion Dollar Project is Scrapped
This must have been a tough, heartbreaking decision. 2000 employees have been working on an autonomous EV car for years. It’s not like there was any problem with having enough capital - Apple has billions and billions of dollars available. And after working on this for 10 years, giving it up now means all that time, labor, and much capital, even for Apple, will go down the drain.
Why? Declining EV sales worldwide. Increased competition, especially from BYD, China’s biggest EV maker.
The writing is on the wall. EVs are turning out to be a niche market for urban short haul commuters who don’t live where it gets real cold, because batteries don’t work if it gets cold enough. They can’t be recharged when there’s a power outage, either, so again, the best use is in urban areas where there are other options in a pinch - like diesel powered buses or taxis or biking or walking.
The other, small market for EVs, which is probably already saturated, is for rich people who can afford to have a backup vehicle that is reliable, ie, a gas or diesel vehicle, or maybe hydrogen, which is another very expensive way to go, but no problem for the rich.
Where I live in Alabama, many people have longish rural commutes, the weather is entirely crazy (meaning power outages and maybe those strange fires we saw after the latest Florida hurricane), and sometimes the weather is bitterly cold. Plus, this is trump country. EVs would have to be mandated down people’s throats before they’d buy one, and if they were forced to - it would be like Stalin purposely ruining their economy. People would be stranded and out of work. A nightmare.