Foxconn is designing an EV platform specifically for this.

https://www.foxconn.com/en-us/products-and-services/event-hi...

We'll see if it works out. Seeing as how they're Apple's biggest partner I'd be surprised if Apple one day doesn't design a car. EV's are simpler, eventually they'll all be fast and have 500 mile ranges. The platform won't matter, so what sells the car? Design.

"Outsourcing" is a very poor way to describe Apple's supply chain. They are deeply integrated. For example Apple owns most of the CNCs and similar equipment used. Having tight control over all logistics is core to Apple's strategy of huge global product launches.

You’re wrong. Auto manufacturers source parts from a huge variety of outside manufacturers. Auto manufacturers:

1) manage supply chain (hardest part) 2) spec parts (establish quality metrics, change small aspects of design) 3) come up with car concepts 4) assemble parts certain components (e.g. weld the frame, install all the premade parts)

They are not building or designing every component in a car - not even close.

I mean what do you expect - for them to build everything down to a screw in-house in order to do manufacturing ?

Final assembly, fit and finish - those are very important things on high end cars - and as Tesla demonstrated - not that easy to do even when you're flush with cash.

Apple outsources all of it's production - I'd be surprised if they can get premium car assembly from Foxconn model when Tesla is still having issues.

Final assembly, fit and finish aren't really the key part of what they're doing, though. There's no reason they can't outsource that too.

It’s not that they don’t build. They don’t even design a lot of the car components (incl. gear boxes, abs, traction control etc). They’re bough from OEM companies, who design and manufacture them.

> Final assembly, fit and finish - those are very important things on high end cars - and as Tesla demonstrated - not that easy to do even when you're flush with cash

Is it that hard though? The initial build problems came from ignoring industry experience about trying to automate final assembly — a step that very manufacture had tried and failed to do before.

No shame in trying it, maybe industrial robotic control have improved since then, but you usually don’t test such a thing in your assembly lines.

After Tesla ripped out the robots, I don’t know what their problem was beyond poor training and line management. Putting doors on straight — let alone with matching colors — for over a hundred years.

If it’s really hard to physically build a car, we’d see similar massive faults from Rivian and Lucid, but I’m unaware of any.

Huh? The auto industry if famous for outsourcing to plants outside of the country and bring the final cars back in to the country. They are also famous for manufacturing the parts from all of the world, and then assembling them in another country. Apple's "Designed in Cupertino, assembled in ___" is the same thing.

> not sure outsourcing manufacturing and focusing on design works in auto industry

Engines were monuments of engineering. A new engine design could dig a decades-long moat around a company. This combination of proprietary zeal and complexity dictated the market structure.

EVs are different. They’re simpler. And their differentiation is on soft points like style and software. (The tech driver is the battery, but nobody is vertically integrated to a differentiated extent anymore.) This, theoretically, permits a small(er) design team to arrange supply chains and command factories from afar. It also permits mix-and-match manufacturing, with specialisation and competition at the component level.

Even if that were true, you don't think Apple is capable of building out manufacturing capabilities?

It does, Magna's whole business model is based around that.

Fisker is trying it and should have a car to market next year. They've been hitting all their targets.

They outsource their manufacturing to Magna Steyr.

like how they outsourced their chips, right? They only designed a square with a M1 stamped on it.

Manga Steyr builds Jaguars, BMWs, Fiskers, and others under just this model.