For those who don’t know John Gruber and his blog Daring Fireball, he’s one of the most knowledgeable Apple writers out there. He’s been using Apple products since the beginning, and really understands how Apple operates and what makes them special. His writing and podcasts have always inspired me, and I highly recommend checking them out if you’re interested in Apple.
Yesterday he shared his thoughts on the Project Titan news everyone is talking about:
My favorite story about the Apple car project — from before the reset heralded by the return of Doug Field — is that they actually had a concept for an Apple-designed and branded car. And they added it all up and it turned out to be so embarrassingly expensive that they had to seriously hit the reset button. That’s the way it goes, no shame in that.
I’m quite certain that Apple has a very talented team, a division even, working their asses off on this, and might well come up with the iPhone of cars. But I’ll take all Project Titan related news with a grain of salt until we see something real.
Daring Fireball
The other interesting news on this topic today was that Elon Musk confirmed he tried to initiate discussions with Apple over a possible sale of Tesla for $60 billion, but Apple wasn’t interested in taking the meeting. That’s not surprising, as Apple doesn’t typically do large risky acquisitions. Apple’s biggest buy was Beats for $3 billion. Even at Tesla’s lowest point, a deal would have been the largest in Apple’s history by a factor of at least 10.
During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2020
Personally, I’m with Gruber on this one. We’ve been hearing about Project Titan for a long time –– since at least 2014. Any products Apple puts into this space is going to turn heads, but the global auto market is extremely capital intensive and generally a tough nut to crack. Apple doesn’t like to fail. If they don’t have a clear path to success, they’ll default to saying no. Who knows what the world is going to look like in 2024 anyway?