My first guess is that it would have been overpriced and deliberately incompatible with existing chargers. No loss.
Their success with apple maps / navigation foreshadowed this event. They couldn’t even figure that out.
I would LOVE to know what, if any IP, patents, or tech came out of this whole thing. I’m guessing “not much”.
They definitely applied for a shitload of patents:
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/25/apple-car-patent-applications/
https://www.patentlyapple.com/autonomous-vehicle-technology/
Seems the patents were the goal all along. Money by litigation and licensing.
All signs show that they were trying to build and ship something. Apple was in pretty close talks with vehicle manufacturers a few years ago. They were trying to find a manufacturing partner to pump out the cars. Apple was looking to have companies like Hyundai operate as their Foxconn for cars.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35411762/apple-hyundai-kia-deal-car/
Just because lots of patents exist, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t intent to ship. All of their shipping product lines have tons of used and unused patents that came from their r&d.
There are cheaper ways to make patent money than by spinning up an R&D auto division with thousands of people.
This is the first I’ve heard about it
The main advantages of Apple Car® is that it runs on Apple Road® and Apple Fuel®. It was made of commonly available standardised components such as nuts and bolts but with special Apple Thread Pitch® that require Apple Spanner® to use them. There are no instruction manuals to repair Apple Car®, only Apple Dealership® is permitted. The outcome of the marketing effort causes the users to eventually become delusional about the product, believing that they own the best product and refusing to entertain any evidence to the contrary, much like religious beliefs.
