Apple probably isn't getting into the car business. At least not in the way we know it today. It's getting into the mobility business, where you dial up a ride on your smartphone, Uber-style, get to where you're going and move on with your life. No monthly payments, no insurance, no maintenance and repairs. That's what Apple could bring to the game, and it's obviously not alone.
After the last two weeks of news, exclusively composed of "leaks" and unnamed sources, Apple is obviously doing something big with Project Titan, the codename of its car-related project. It's poached battery and automotive engineers and executives, and put an estimated 200 people working on the project in an undisclosed location in the Valley.That's led to a string of analysis and speculation about exactly what Apple is doing and how a company known for PCs, phones, and tablets could possibly survive in the traditional automotive space. It can't because it doesn't need to.3Ex-GM CEO Dan Akerson's comments about Apple having "no idea" what it's getting into were actually prescient, because he doesn't have a clue. Akerson is looking at building and selling cars from the traditional standpoint of an industry that's been optimizing, iterating, and churning them out for over 100 years. Unlike an iPhone, the profit margins are slim and the cost of doing business is massive. It doesn't matter Apple has nearly $180 billion in the bank, a market cap that's triple the size of Toyota, and is spending money any way it can.4
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