On the early morning of February 28th, a news about the cancellation of Apple's electric vehicle plan attracted attention in the two hot fields of new energy vehicles and artificial intelligence. Several industry leaders commented one after another, and topics such as "Apple cancels car manufacturing" and "Musk responds to Apple's entry into AIGC" also made headlines.
Big shots quickly "eat melons"
On the 28th, it was reported by the media that Apple has decided to cancel its over a decade long electric vehicle project. Apple executives have informed employees that many members of the car manufacturing project team will be deployed to the machine learning and artificial intelligence departments to focus on generative AI projects, which occupy an important position in the company's schedule. Meanwhile, hundreds of hardware and automotive engineers in the team will have the opportunity to apply for job positions in other project teams.
According to Weibo
Shortly after the news was exposed, it quickly attracted attention on social media both domestically and internationally. Tesla CEO Musk quickly "ate the melon", forwarded the relevant news, and paired it with emoticons of "paying tribute" and "lighting a cigarette".
Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, who is also on the road of "car building", also tweeted: "I was shocked to see this news! We are well aware of the difficulty of car building, and we still made an extremely firm strategic choice three years ago. We really want to build a good car for Rice noodles!" On the same day, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Auto, commented: "It is absolutely right for Apple to give up car building and choose to focus on AI, and the timing is also appropriate."
In addition, 360 founder Zhou Hongyi posted a video speculating that Apple is giving up car manufacturing or for the sake of "ALL IN AI". In his view, "all companies in the United States are in ALL IN AI, and every company must embrace AI because not embracing AI will result in being eliminated.".
According to Weibo
Affected by the news, Apple's stock price, which had fallen nearly 0.9% during the session, rebounded and closed up 0.81% at $182.63 per share.
According to Wind
"Abandoning the car" has long been a precursor
Apple's "car making" appeared as early as 2014, which was the attention grabbing "Titan Plan" at that time. Apple has invested heavily in recruiting a large number of talents from giants such as Google, Mercedes Benz, and Tesla to form teams, and there have been rumors of potential collaborations with car companies such as BMW, Volkswagen, and Hyundai. During this period, there were reports that Apple had poached over 300 people from Tesla by the end of 2019; In January 2021, Apple's release of over 300 automotive related job vacancies also attracted attention.
Apple's grand car making plan is full of twists and turns. In May 2022, a car project manager hired by Apple from Tesla for autonomous driving resigned after less than 7 months in office. Previously, organic sources claimed that Apple's Apple Car team had been disbanded at one point, and if they want to mass produce Apple Cars in 2025, they need to undergo team restructuring within 3 to 6 months.
Apple Store in Taikoo Li, Chengdu
The news of Apple abandoning its car has not been officially confirmed by the company, but many industry insiders still believe it is reasonable. Based on multiple perspectives, "difficulty" and "volume" may be the two major obstacles on Apple's road to car manufacturing.
Apple's original goal was to create an L5 level, fully autonomous car. However, in 2023, it was reported that the launch of Apple Cars would be postponed to 2026, because its executives found it "impossible" to launch a fully autonomous vehicle under the existing technology environment.
On the other hand, the competition in the electric vehicle market is becoming increasingly fierce. Leaving aside the giant Tesla, fuel powered car brands such as Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Audi have also focused on entering the electric vehicle market in recent years. The intense competition can also be seen in the domestic market. On February 19th, after BYD announced a high-profile price reduction, multiple electric vehicle brands such as Wuling Automobile, Changan Qiyuan, and Nezha Automobile followed suit and launched a price war at the beginning of the year, which will deeply affect the future automotive market pattern.
In fact, Apple's innovation halo has encountered many setbacks in recent years. The recently popular Apple VR product "Vision Pro" quickly became a focus due to fan returns after experiencing frenzy and hype when it was first released.
Sora reignites a craze
What is Apple's current situation in the field of generative AI after abandoning cars?
Last July, the news of Apple creating a large model framework Ajax and chatbot service "AppleGPT" became a market focus. At the same time, Apple provided dozens of large model positions during this period, and the news of recruiting generative AI talents also attracted attention.
In October of the same year, analysts from Haitong International Securities pointed out that Apple planned to launch generative AI technology on iPhones and iPads as early as the end of 2024. If planned, Apple may launch generative AI features starting from iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.
In January of this year, there were media reports that Apple planned to launch a series of generative AI based tools at the Global Developers Conference in June. These new tools will appear as part of iOS 18 in front of Apple fans, including an improved version of Siri. However, if Apple's generative AI vision is to be fully realized, it will take at least 2025.
Recently, Apple is not the only company that has been paying attention to the AI field. The investment enthusiasm in the AI sector in domestic and foreign markets continues to rise, and the layout of related companies is also constantly increasing.
CICC Wealth Analysis points out that the growth expectations of technology stocks are largely due to the high expectations of the AI concept. The recent launch of Sora has once again sparked a wave of AI, but currently, upstream inputs represented only by artificial intelligence chips are facing prosperity (NVIDIA, AMD, etc. have achieved significant profit growth), while Google TPU is a representative, Major leading technology companies are also developing their own chips to challenge Nvidia's monopoly position. With intensified market competition, the high profit margins of AI chips are likely to be difficult to maintain in the long term.
Guosheng Securities believes that AI vertical applications will gradually be implemented, and high-quality supply will not only help improve the valuation of the sector, but also enhance market awareness of the AI industry and provide data support. AI investment will also enter the data-driven stage of application implementation from the logical mapping stage. Under the trend of emerging cultural and entertainment industry development, coupled with AI technology empowering content production, industries such as short dramas and interactive video games have good development prospects. The value of high-quality IP copyrighted content is expected to be re evaluated, and the performance of related companies is optimistic.
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