That ecosystem alone could be Apple’s greatest asset moving forward, according to Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Bernstein Limited. “That’s why I think it’s one of the biggest scares for traditional automakers out there,” he said. “They would be much more scared by an Apple than by a Rivian or a Lucid or a Fisker or even by a Nio.”
The firm doesn’t believe an Apple car will arrive before 2024 and, perhaps, not until 2028 because the company already sets extremely high standards for launching new products “and has abandoned new offerings in the past very late in development.”
Work on the Apple car project began back in 2014. Apple is still continuing to develop autonomous software but it’s not the current industry leader.
