The Apple Car Thread

  • Thread starter Robin
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It's not just me, right?
1994-2000_Citro%C3%ABn_XM_hatchback_01.jpg
 
There is no way that render in the real thing, Apple wouldn't produce a car that ugly and dated! :lol: I suspect it going to look Tesla like but more angular and boxy in an 80's sort of way. Utilitarian inspired like their products.
 
Robin.
There is no way that render in the real thing, Apple wouldn't produce a car that ugly and dated! :lol: I suspect it going to look Tesla like but more angular and boxy in an 80's sort of way. Utilitarian inspired like their products.
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I hope it doesn't, I mean that would just capture Google in such a perfect way. Boring, straight to business yet retro modern all at the same time it's nearly cool. Like the guy that wears a retro 80s tie on Casual Friday's to work at Google headquarters.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
I hope it doesn't, I mean that would just capture Google in such a perfect way. Boring, straight to business yet retro modern all at the same time it's nearly cool. Like the guy that wears a retro 80s tie on Casual Friday's to work at Google headquarters.
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I didn't quite get what you meant, do you mean kind of cool but off the mark?
 
Robin.
I didn't quite get what you meant, do you mean kind of cool but off the mark?
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No I find the look cool, because as said it looks like the idealized future car seen in many sci-fi films of the 80s and 90s. But it also has that quirky concept look seen in the U.S. around that same time for cars of the "future", which I think capturing that boring yet futuristic mixture in a modern frame without absolutely looking like those cars is cool. It's what many expected cars to look like, yet never did. I mean if the rest of the car actually looks like that and is that, I could have easily pictured it in Blade Runner or similar.

My hope is it doesn't go off looking like a Tesla, which to me while nice in some aspects isn't all that far off of what other non-electric or hybrids look like. Why should google follow the same line of thought.
 
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LMSCorvetteGT2
No I find the look cool, because as said it looks like the idealized future car seen in many sci-fi films of the 80s and 90s. But it also has that quarky concept look seen in the U.S. around that same time for cars of the "future", which I think capturing that boring yet futuristic mixture in a modern frame without absolutely looking like those cars is cool. It's what many expected cars to look like, yet never did. I mean if the rest of the car actually looks like that and is that, I could have easily pictured it in Blade Runner or similar.

My hope is it doesn't go off looking like a Tesla, which to me while nice in some aspects isn't all that far off of what other non-electric or hybrids look like. Why should google follow the same line of thought.
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Oh I see what you mean, kinda like how cars of the future portrayed in the past often look cooler even now than what we ended up with.
 
An Apple car just sounds so cheesy and I'm a Mac sympathiser. I can't see it being an enthusiast's car, that's for sure.
 
VXR
An Apple car just sounds so cheesy and I'm a Mac sympathiser. I can't see it being an enthusiast's car, that's for sure.
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lol.... enthusiast.

I don't see this doing well really. I know a lot of people, a lot of people, have iPhones, Macs, and iPads, but not everyone of those who have them, can buy a car... I mean, some people are financing their phones, so something as long term as a car, pff..
 
Joey D
So Autoblog put this on Facebook with the line "Could this be the Apple Car? Find out on 4/14." All I can think is that it looks like a 1980's Buick/Cadillac/Oldsmobile concept car.

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Imagine that with Rose Gold color :(
 
if they wanted to be in the automotive sphere, they should've offered car head units 10 years ago when many people had large iTunes libraries, which would've offered the typical Apple convenience by linking to your iPod in a slot via dock connector. That would've been a more Apple approach to entering the car world - taking an existing product and making it seamless.
 
VXR
if they wanted to be in the automotive sphere, they should've offered car head units 10 years ago when many people had large iTunes libraries, which would've offered the typical Apple convenience by linking to your iPod in a slot via dock connector. That would've been a more Apple approach to entering the car world - taking an existing product and making it seamless.
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They did. The "Mc"Intosh systems in the Subaru Outbacks. :sly:
 
Swagger897
I don't see this doing well really. I know a lot of people, a lot of people, have iPhones, Macs, and iPads, but not everyone of those who have them, can buy a car... I mean, some people are financing their phones, so something as long term as a car, pff..
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This. It's one thing to be a devoted fan and buy a 'normal' Apple product (who can't afford one of those!) but it's a big stretch to make that same loyal customer base fork out for a car which you know ain't gonna be cheap. This could really go one of two ways, it could crash and burn badly for them.

People may love Apple but do they love Apple THAT much?
 
http://www.motortrend.com/news/apple-car-exclusive/

"In September, the car was allegedly raised to “committed project” status with a 2019 release date."

"The tug-of-war has grown tense with Tesla, with Apple’s rumored $250,000 signing bonuses and Musk’s famous, “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.”"
 
Reading that just made me want to hit my head against a wall. That don't really get it. Worse, they're calling out BMW on car design and car feel. Apple wouldn't know design/driving experience if it smacked them in the face.
 
It certainly does have a bit of the 'Syd Mead' about it.
I suspect it was done by the same person responsible for this:

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I saw this some time last year, whilst looking at other peoples Apple concept car sketches.
 
While I agree with a lot of the TTAC piece, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the theory of the article MT put out and the concept of enlisting experts to speculate on what an Apple car might be like.

What I object to is the utter turd they came up with, which really does look like some kind of background prop from a 1980s film set in the future*.

It's so poor it's hard to know where to start. Some elements, like the wheels, really do look like they're from the 1980s. The surfacing is unsophisticated and bland - while I don't expect an Apple car to be as busy as some of the cars common today, nor would I expect it to be largely slab-sided with curiously flared wheel arches or ugly lower skirts. I'd not expect the use of space to be so poor either - fitting only four passengers in such a massive form is baffling.

And good god, that colour. At the very least paint the damn thing white if you want it to look futuristic, or go for a bright solid shade like Newson did on the 021C.

On the subject of Newson, much as the 021C is one of my all-time favourite concept cars, I think it's telling that nobody has actually asked him back to design an actual, everyday, practical vehicle. Maybe, having looked at other products he's designed, it's that all barring a few (the Leica camera comes to mind) are hugely form-over-function. You can't really do that with a car designed to be used every day in all weathers and housing dysfunctional families, far less so than making a sofa for someone with more money and sense to shove in the corner of a minimalist flat.

What makes Apple products appealing is that function comes first - and I'd stress, function for those completely disinterested in the nitty-gritty of the technology beneath. My iPhone features the bare minimum of buttons required to work and it's spectacularly easy to navigate its functions. That it's then painted bright green and swish animations for certain things is secondary. It's a nice device to operate first, and a nice one to look at second.

In the same vein, I'd expect an Apple car to be utterly practical. Minimalist, but not to the point of bland design or poor function. Free of embellishment. If those demands are met, then it can be pretty. I'd actually think it'd be relatively utilitarian in most respects - think of a MacBook Air, which is just an unremarkable sliver of aluminium - but incredibly slick in the HMI department, whether that's a touchscreen inside or the actual physical controls.



* Something those movies never got right was brought to my attention by an article I read a while back. I can't remember the source, but the idea was that if you're representing a time only a relatively small distance into the future, what you change must generally be in a 75/25 proportion - 75% of stuff will actually be quite recognisable - buildings, places, the general form of vehicles, daily paraphernalia - and the other 25% can be new and shiny and possibly weird. Break this ratio and you fall further into the uncanny valley.
 
homeforsummer
* Something those movies never got right was brought to my attention by an article I read a while back. I can't remember the source, but the idea was that if you're representing a time only a relatively small distance into the future, what you change must generally be in a 75/25 proportion - 75% of stuff will actually be quite recognisable - buildings, places, the general form of vehicles, daily paraphernalia - and the other 25% can be new and shiny and possibly weird. Break this ratio and you fall further into the uncanny valley.
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I think this rings true with regards to the BMW i3. I keep seeing them about (saw one today infact). It really is a good balance of present and future. I think the same applies to the i8 too (they look stunning in white in the flesh).
 
Yeah, the i3 and i8 are the perfect level of futuristic for me. Neither is unrecognisable as a car by any stretch, but each still looks years ahead of anything else on the road. Suspect they'll continue to do so for some time.
 
Well, duh. Where has Jalopnik been since 2005?


This, however:
The wording of these tweets was seemingly chosen carefully, but the implication was that somehow, unfathomably, Motor Trend—not WIRED, not Apple Insider, not Gizmodo or Jalopnik, not 9 to 5 Mac or any other publication willing to do actual digging and risk getting blacklisted to oblivion by Apple—would be the publication to leak the Apple Car.
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Is a bit of a presumptuous argument itself. I have very little doubt that one of the big automotive magazines would be one of the first to leak information about any Apple car, because the Apple car isn't going to be photographed in secret by Chinese sweatshop workers or accidentally revealed early by an FCC submission. Any level of juiced in that technology blogs may be for Apple's normal goings on seem practically irrelevant when it comes to constructing an automobile. Nor do any automotive magazines have to worry about being blacklisted no matter how much digging they do.
 
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Tornado
Well, duh. Where has Jalopnik been since 2005?
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It does strike me that Jalopnik is:

a) Late to the criticism party here after TTAC has pretty much already summed this up,
b) An entity that itself is well known for clickbait and,
c) Doing little more than piggybacking off MT's Apple car-related traffic by posting a criticism of it

Not sure, in other words, that Jalopnik is the ideal outlet to act as a moral platform for the automotive journalism industry.
 

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