Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

What if APPLE would join Tesla

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Hello TMC forum members,

this is my first posting and I hope to join quite some interesting topics in the future.

Short info about my background- I work in the design industry and come from the motherland of gasheads
where the people when sepaking english have strrrrong accents, so please excuse that I´m not a native speaker.

I´ve been following Tesla for 4 years and closely since the introduction of the Model S in 2009.
IMHO they have the best autodesigner in the whole industry (ok apart from Murat Günak), and assuming
they succeed with the crash tests (which I am a little worried since las nights conference call), golden years lie ahead of them.

Some of You might know that Steve Jobs was a big fan of the German Auto industry, and that 2007 he was in talks with Martin Winterkorn,
CEO of VW Group (11 brands under the roof, including Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche, Seat, Skoda,VW,AUDI), which came to a hold in early 2008 (ego?)
Apparently the following year an Apple task force helped out BMW "declutter" the hoplessly overfeatured idrive.

On the other hand Samsung recently announced to make Chris Bangle the design guru for its electronics division, ranking on the level of a president.

Seeing the user interface of the Model S/X I was underwhelmed by the ergonomics , it looked cheap and tecchie and I´m shure the customer would prefer an Apple version , let alone
the unnecessary learning curve of the Tesla.

The big picture begins to resemble the pre iphone days, when Apple denied any activity while being almost finished with iphone 1.

With 100 Billion in cash, don´t You think the the joined forces of Holzhausen and Ive and the managing power of Cook and Musk would form an assertive dream team .
The corporate cultures match,and with George Blankenship on board....


One could dream, no?
 
Welcome to the forum officially tray loader.

I would have to disagree with you about the Model S/Model X UI being cheap. The Model S and now the Model X UI is very straight forward and elegant in its presentation of information to the driver or occupants. I would tend to believe that TM did not want something that was over-the-top and too complex like BMW's gen 1 iDrive.

Thought iPhone was trend setting in its own right but it does not have to be duplicated at every point in our lives. Yes, one can dream.
 
If Tesla successfully launches Gen III and it's a hit and they're selling 100,000+ cars per year then I could see Google buying Tesla to further their ambitions for autonomous vehicles. Maybe it's just a joint venture and not an outright purchase but at some point Google looks like they want to get into the (autonomous) car business and Elon and Larry & Sergey are buddies.
 
If Tesla successfully launches Gen III and it's a hit and they're selling 100,000+ cars per year then I could see Google buying Tesla to further their ambitions for autonomous vehicles. Maybe it's just a joint venture and not an outright purchase but at some point Google looks like they want to get into the (autonomous) car business and Elon and Larry & Sergey are buddies.

Right -- I think the biggest obstacle to an Apple/Tesla partnership of some kind is the fact that Sergey and Larry were very early investors in Tesla, and (if I'm not mistaken) got two of the first Roadsters that were produced. Apple and Google are offering overlapping products more and more (particularly with smartphones), so it would be really difficult for Tesla to abandon their relationship with Google (or at least, Google's founders and current CEO) to partner up with Apple in a formal way.
 
I personally like and trust Google more than I do Apple and I wouldn't want 'my beloved Tesla' brand to be tarnished by some of the negative stuff going around about the new monster-on-the-block, i.e. Apple.

Would love a more formal Google-Tesla relationship - cross-branding and marketing (even if only on the surface with some cursory integration points such as Google Maps) would be very much valuable for Tesla.
 
I personally think it would be great but probably a bad business move on Tesla's part. They don't want to be stuck with one platform or be held hostage by Apple if they do something Tesla doesn't like. I believe they designed everything in-house on open source platforms which gives them lots of freedom.
 
I personally like and trust Google more than I do Apple and I wouldn't want 'my beloved Tesla' brand to be tarnished by some of the negative stuff going around about the new monster-on-the-block, i.e. Apple.

Funny, I'm sure there's lots of people who would say, "I personally like and trust Apple more than I do Google and I wouldn't want 'my beloved Tesla' brand to be tarnished by some of the negative stuff going around about the new monster-on-the-block, i.e. Google."
 
Funny, I'm sure there's lots of people who would say, "I personally like and trust Apple more than I do Google and I wouldn't want 'my beloved Tesla' brand to be tarnished by some of the negative stuff going around about the new monster-on-the-block, i.e. Google."

Go go magic Microsoft!

EDIT: It is pretty sad but I am starting to trust Microsoft more and more. Google's new privacy policy is a bit scary, and the iPhone location log was too.

EDIT: I actually live in the US and have a Symbian phone.
 
Last edited:
Right -- I think the biggest obstacle to an Apple/Tesla partnership of some kind is the fact that Sergey and Larry were very early investors in Tesla, and (if I'm not mistaken) got two of the first Roadsters that were produced. Apple and Google are offering overlapping products more and more (particularly with smartphones), so it would be really difficult for Tesla to abandon their relationship with Google (or at least, Google's founders and current CEO) to partner up with Apple in a formal way.

Maybe, but then the 100 billion make even more sense-Ive/Cook have to do it solo.
Ive should be capable to design a car, no?
 
If Tesla were just a division of some mega-company, could it possibly keep the same focus? The same gotta-get-this-right intensity? Why would Musk want to be some division president, reporting through a hierarchy?

Besides, although Apple/Google/MS might all be better at software design, none of them have any experience in the hard parts of starting and running a car company. I'm not saying that elegant UIs are easy, but it's not the same as setting up and running an auto assembly line.
 
If you can't do control-alt-delete with a voice command, you'd have to take both hands off the wheel which would be a safety problem.:smile:

Easily fixed.

xwheel.jpg