Featured Apple iCar BEV coming in 2028, downgraded to SAE Level 2+

I know people who refer to 25kW DC chargers as Level 2.5.
If there is a large span of capabilities people will try to make smaller sub categories.

 

There are 5 levels under the the SAE J1772 standard. Three for AC, with the AC Level 3 never being used. At least in the US. It may have been used in Europe early on, until DC chargers became available. Then there are two for DC charging.
SAE J1772 - Wikipedia

Yet making up half levels is precisely what you did in post #4.

 

3 means certain things to regulators. That is why mercedes sells their drive pilot as level 3 in europe and level 2 in the US. The conditions for drive pilot to operate under level 3 are under 40 mph on a well marked freeway, daytime in clear weather, no construction. These only apply to some well mapped highways in california and Nevada. That pretty much leaves off all of my miles. In almost all cases the mercedes is level 2 although they did get level 3 pr.

Level 2 driver needs to pay attention and take over when needed. Level 3 driver needs to be visible in a seat and take over when system tell him to take over. Level 3 requires hardware redundancy and 6 months of testing. Most of the safety improvements are enhanced by a driver being ready when they determine it, not waiting for the system to tell them to take over.

That is why a 2+ like the tesla autopilot or this new apple is more appealing for a manufacturer. 2028, I expect tesla to have level 3 working, but it has a long way to go.

 

Yet people don't use them correctly with calling DC charging Level 3 or slower DC chargers

You went beyond using a different label for Level 2+ to applying your own levels to models based on opinions of how capable they are

"These level definitions, along with additional supporting terms and definitions provided herein, can be used to describe the full range of driving automation features equipped on [motor] vehicles in a functionally consistent and coherent manner." -
J3016_202104: Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles - SAE International

The point of these levels was to provide a common categorization of driver assistance and autonomous driving features to allow clear discussion in the industry and regulators. It is not concerned with how well a specific model's features work.

 

The Level 2+ happened because of marketing. While there are some technical hurdles to getting to Level 3, the main reason automakers aren't releasing Level 3 cars now that technology has advanced is because of the regulatory hurdles and costs. If there were hard technical differences between Level 2, 2+, and 3, the SAE would have updated their document to reflect that.

Your choice of using levels to compare cars meant others could assume you were talking about SAE levels in a thread were your OP topic was about them.

 

Apple Cancels Electric Car Project - MacRumors

ICar, we hardly knew ye…

 

They probably looked at what tesla, bmw, and gm were doing and decided it would be hard to catch up.

 

That makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, they're moving a lot of the developers and their resources over to their AI team...

...Maybe the resulting AI can eventually be used to drive cars?

I kind of doubt Apple was getting hung up on stuff like seats and door handles; the hard part was always going to be the automation.

 

Apple pulls the plug on its electric car project - Autoblog

Sure were a lot of folks working on a semi-secret but not so much project. But look at the most recent timeline and see they missed their opportunity. Couldn't project to have high enough margins to satisfy the senior management given the competition in a few years..

 

Cars are not very high margin, and the BEV market in particular is crashing as inventory piles up and Tesla drops prices to try to keep demand up.

 

The last time I left GE, I was walking into work pissed that the R&D budget and recent proposal was aimed at "logistics," not our strength, engineering. Sounds like Apple realized iCar was not their area of expertise and refocused on their areas of expertise.

Bob Wilson

 

Even without looking at BEVs - try to look up the history of american cars in Europe. Theres not much besides a few Fords and whatever Stellantis owns (Opel/Vauxhall and these are pretty German). Just Tesla could finally make a dent for offering something new.
Chinas as a huge car market is now over for westerners, other potential big markets (India, South America) dont have the money for Apple Car. So it just leaves NA and perhaps Japan which is similar to Europe when it comes to American cars while beeing behind on EVs as well. The only thing speaking for Japan is their love for Apple.

So yeah, besides the margin the overall market seems pretty small but perhaps just NA would have been good enough.

 

They should have hired "Dan O'Dowd" the self proclaimed software expert on AutoPilot and Full Self Driving.

Bob Wilson