[mulcahey]

I really wonder how they will differentiate themselves from Tesla's offerings. Tesla represents the very cutting edge of innovation in the automotive industry being the leaders in autonomy, EVs, battery production, the chargin network, etc.

I wonder if Apple will partner with Tesla to use their Gigafactory batteries and charging network. If not they would have a lot of ground to make up.

[abalone]

Tesla's made enormous strides in core automotive engineering but to answer your question you have to ask, what would make a 10X difference in a product category? That's Apple's rough criteria for entering a space. It's not just moving to electrics.

The answer, at least for Apple, has always been in user-facing software. The hardware is a "pretty box" (to use Jobs' phrase) and certainly there is impressive core engineering there. But the 10X difference comes from fundamentally re-envisioned software platforms and user interfaces.

So this doesn't make much sense for cars if we only think in terms of traditional automotive engineering or "merely" shifting to an electric platform. Tons of incredible feats of engineering, but not a 10X difference in user experience or opening of a new landscape like the Mac, iPhone, etc.

BUT if we look to the (semi-)autonomous future then it's a huge wide-open landscape of innovation. And it's all about the software smarts and user interface. It's critical to understand that the user interface is essential, i.e. that we will not simply jump to fully autonomous cars. They will be cars that interface with human drivers for quite some time. So that's where Apple will compete with Tesla.

And yes getting the underlying (electric) automotive hardware and production right is a huge challenge in and of itself, but ultimately technically feasible. The software layer on top of it is more of a proprietary differentiator in the long run.