Not only that, if all goes according to Cupertino’s plan, we’ll spend the next five years discussing whether the iCar will come in silver, gold and space gray until all the suspense culminates in a raucous red-carpet unveiling by CEO Tim Cook that includes many triumphant rounds of applause and uses of the word “amazing.”
Nothing illustrates the incredible hubris of Apple better than its purported plans to become an overnight automaker. Recent news reports describe the company’s mad dash to rush an electric vehicle into production by 2020, entering the regulatory, capital and legal minefield — not to even mention the supply chain — that is the auto industry.
And this move comes at a time when competition could not be more fierce.
Apple’s capricious foray into automobiles is made possible by the dangerous combination of $170 billion in cash and investors for whom no amount of year-over-year profit increase will ever be enough. They’d sooner see Apple run into the ground than accept the incredibly successful status quo of consumer electronics.
It seems the pressure to get into automobiles was so intense that Apple was willing to take all manner of legal risks to form its new auto division of about 200 employees. At least five of those workers come from Waltham-based A123 Systems LLC, the battery-maker that filed federal suit against Apple last week, accusing the company of illegally poaching its top scientists and engineers “to establish a battery division that is similar if not identical to A123’s.”
To give you an idea of the lengths that Apple was willing to go to hire top talent: it managed to lure an A123 scientist who earned $600,000 last year plus a $5,000-per-month living allowance, according to court records.
These headaches are needless, too. Apple doesn’t have to manufacture vehicles to be in the auto business. Nearly every automaker on the planet would be open to licensing Apple technology. Baking an Apple operating system into already existing cars (even just the electric ones, if that’s what they’re going for) seems like a lot less risk and potentially more reward.
That is unless Apple’s top brass has lost confidence in its current product pipeline and is in desperate need of a new direction.
©2015 the Boston Herald Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
