Apple could spin up a joint venture with, say, Rivian or even Ford for 1/10th of that tomorrow.

I’ll be honest, I think the whole Apple car thing is a pipe dream. Apple doesn’t have some sort of magic that is two decades beyond anybody else driving in circles underneath their weird spaceship campus. If they have their own full self driving, it doesn’t matter who assembles the car. They can sell the tech to everybody.

But isn't the Apple way to combine hardware and software better than anyone else?

I've only ever bought an Apple tableet for my wife, so I've got no bias here. But I'd be keen to see what they can produce. If only to differentiate the market up a bit ... it's as boring as hell at the moment and why I haven't pulled the trigger on one.

Tesla is busy throwing away that first mover advantage. And the CEO is busy trashing the brand. I don't think Apple has a problem here.

I suspect they're much more interested in what's happening with the Chinese manufacturers.

Tesla is now moving into making their cars cheaper, with exceptional results. That's leveraging your first mover advantage: compete where others can't, because your manufacturing process is mature.

They’re selling more cars and making a lot less money. The results have been mixed. Cars are a commodity.

$25b this quarter in revenue while profitable is not "mixed results", it's massive.

I see 23.350M in 9/2023 quarter and 24.318M in 12/2022 quarter. that seems revenue slightly down on a quarterly basis on increasing units shipped.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/financials?p=TSLA

I'm talking about q3 and q4 23.

You don’t have to look any further than the Cybertruck to see evidence that Tesla builds cars it wants to build, not what the market wants. This worked to their advantage when no one else was building an EV but now it’s their biggest liability. They could have captured a highly valuable truck or even light pickup market if they just produced something practical. Instead, they launched something like what you see as a concept at the Detroit Autoshow. It’s an art project, and a vain one at that.

They created a sex symbol which manages to include surprising practicality and insane technology. I've been excited about many concept cars, and now I get to buy one, and I know I'm not alone. It's a halo product, but a good one.

> then they'll be 20 years late to Tesla's party

There is no being late.

People buy multiple cars in their lifetime and new car companies will come and go.

Apple doesn't care a bit about the early mover advantage, if that even exists.

iPod -> Nope, there were lousy players out before it.

iPhone - > Nope, smartphones were around before 2007.

iPad -> Nope, tablets, ugly ugly tablets were around too.