Comment by willvarfar
2 days ago
I remember the normal engineering mood inside Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson when the iPhone launched.
We immediately knew we were toast. We used to say that the iphone made us irrelevant and android made us redundant.
I think we can see the same thing happening today.
BYD+CATL are the new iphone and other manufacturers are Symbian, Motorola and Sony Ericsson
VW, Toyota and friends cannot change fast enough. They should have started with big battery investments 10-15y ago and RnDing then, not now when Market is flooded.
In what way is a BYD a completely different/revolutionary product compared to, say a KIA or Volvo EV? This comparison seems a bit strange tbh.
Sure they are more nimble and have higher margins. But the products they make are still just copies of what those other dinosaurs are making. And for a car I'm still very reluctant to buy a Chinese one. Politics aside, what I'm buying is a 5-10 year long service experience where the Volvo dealer is 1km away and where the BYD service location is I'm honestly not sure. It might be around the corner too, but I don't know because it hasn't been there for 50 years yet. It's a much harder market to break into. The easiest way to do it is probably the way Geely and SAIC did it - Buy a brand and/or service network.
I would say it's more that BYD is a battery company that started making cars. They (alongside CATL and arguably Tesla) are the world leaders in battery cells, specifically LFP, so they have strong advantage in the core underlying tech that enables EVs.
I don't see the comparison. BYD is a decent car for an impressive price, but they're ... just cars. The iPhone wasn't "just a phone" that was cheaper than its contemporaries and a little better in very specific areas, it was a complete overhaul of the entire market.
You can look at a BYD and a Nissan and make a decision based on minor trade-offs between different aspects of the car. You couldn't do the same between iPhone and a Sony Ericsson.
>BYD is a decent car for an impressive price, but they're ... just cars.
BYD car division has multiple departments doing independent R&D and releasing independent lines. They were first with 360° tank turn and now a jumping supercar. They are trying hard to deliver things others like Musk keep promising down the line.
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I somehow fail to see this as the most I want in a car is confort and perhaps space not screen time.
A killer feature for a car would be FSD but that’s not an “iPhone” thing.
BYD and the other Chinese manage to sell good EVs for great prices but I don’t see them irreplaceable like the iPhone.
Maybe they are the new Toyota but not the iPhone.
Same goes with Tesla though it’s more complicated because Tesla keeps promising FSD.
The iPhone didn’t promise anything. It just delivered.
It's all about marketing. You buy the thing that has the best marketing, not the best thing. That's how Apple replaced all these other smartphone vendors.
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IMO it's shocking that this _did not_ happen in cars, in past tense.
Model S launched 12 years ago. Apple replaced Nokia in 4 years. Model Y was the second best selling car worldwide, supposedly, after a Toyota and followed by a Toyota. Tesla has market share of about 2.3% globally and stays out of top 10.
iPhone became de facto definition of a phone. In less than 5 years from nothing. Tesla is... not that.
1) Cars are vastly more expensive and regulated. 2) Consequently the sales cycle is slower (usually people last at least 2-3 years for a lease). 3) EVs became politicized very quickly as they impacted politically active industries (oil).
Cellular is to smartphones that charging is to EV's.
Apple launched in a market with comprehensive cellular coverage.
The charging stations grid is still being built out, so Tesla was in a completely different situation circa 2013.
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BYD+CATL is Android. Tesla is Apple.
Bet everyone has a different prespective. And thats what makes this world amazing. One is really free to pick any.
I respectfully disagree.
Tesla is run by a bigot, far right extremist. I would never send money to them, no matter their offerings.
Not so with Apple.
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Nah.
These companies do not have nearly the same value proposition relative their intended market as Apple did.
BYD or Tesla are still just cars. An iPhone completely changed what a "phone" was. And did so in a way that required the rest of the industry to take time to replicate.
BYD is more just Toyota. Which is awesome for BYD. I realize that a lot of people would like to be "just" Toyota in their market. But it's not the same as being Apple.
Tesla? Yeah, they're nothing like Apple. Maybe if they delivered on FSD? But even then, it's not like Apple. Apple made something that no one else was working on as more than maybe a research project. Tesla FSD development doesn't have the same advantage. Everyone is working on FSD. Since we're American, we're hoping Tesla, (or one of the big three), gets it first. But that's more of a hope, not necessarily the way things will pan out.
That's the essential difference between Tesla and Apple. Apple doesn't talk a big game. In fact, they famously and frustratingly say nothing at all. They just deliver. Tesla is still talking about FSD.
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By borrowing your analogy, the general sentiment with the iPhone was excitement and interest when it came out. I just don't see it in the folks around me regarding EVs (price is high, charging is pain). Yes, it's the future, but a future that is way ahead. We aren't even at the point where those old "devices" start to show their age. I'd say Symbians and Ericssons still have time.
People also forget that the iPhone wasn't what we have today - it was an iPod that made phone calls, and that alone was enough "for most people" - huge swaths of people had iPods and a cell phone so even if it had been mediocre it would have succeeded.
It not being mediocre is how it ate the world.
I wouldn't count Toyota out. Their mega battery plant in North Carolina is coming online this year, and the biggest drag on their current EV/PHEV lineup is the batteries. New EV/PHEV models are on the way, and frankly if they just update what they have with better batteries they will be absolutely phenomenal because they are currently great to drive and run extremely well despite lackluster battery range.
For the PHEVs yes they are battery constrained. They have great products and a ton of demand and difficulty keeping up manufacturing due to limited batteries.
For their EV, they have yet to make something that is competitive. Their EV is slow to charge, slow to accelerate, somewhat short in range, and quite expensive before they started adding—-in some cases five figure—-incentives to move them. It even had a recall for the wheels coming off.
Not just Toyota; the U.S. will have dozens of battery plants because it is strategic, like having our own chips.
Are we seeing the same thing, though?
The average consumer replaces their smartphone about every 3 years (at least in the western world, places like India are on an even shorter cycle). Additionally, the global average price of a smartphone is about 400 USD. That's a much faster moving market than cars and the investment is much lower.
BYD is very impressive, but I wouldn't look at the situation as the same.
In developing countries, from what I could find, the ASP is around $160
No, these are not disruptors. Substantial incremental improvements, but part of the larger battle.
I disagree. Cars are much more entrenched status symbols than phones were back then. A Porsche is a Porsche, a truck to show you're manly and outdoorsy is a truck.
People will continue to buy brands they know and whose marketing aligns with how they see themselves. Not everyone will switch to BEVs for a variety of reasons - cost, lack of infrastructure, or hell, even contrarianism.
VW, Renault, Nissan, Stellantis, Toyota can change fast enough before BEVs are the only thing on the market. All of them already have models in various sizes (e.g. Renault make very good and adequate cheap EVs nobody else comes even close to in the big EU markets) and varying quality. It's easier for VW to improve their EVs than it is for Tesla to launder their image.
Also keep in mind that the iPhone was far from starting at zero: they did not so much enter the phone market as a newcomer as they did pull the phone market into the existing and utterly dominated iPod market. Dominated so much that I don't even dare calling it the mp3 player market.
> A Porsche is a Porsche, a truck to show you're manly and outdoorsy is a truck.
A Rolls-Royce is a BMW, a Chrysler is a Fiat, an Aston Martin is a Ford, a Jaguar is a Tata, a Lamborghini is an Audi. And a Porsche is a Volkswagen.
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Status symbols can be shifted with marketing. BEVs are heavy as fuck, and (at least theoretically) torquey as fuck at zero speed - both of those seem pretty manly if you put the right spin on them.
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> BYD+CATL
Unless these two companies change the laws of physics in order to exponentially improve the overall performance of batteries (exponentially faster charging times, from hours to 5-10 minutes, exponentially cheaper batteries that would last longer) then, no, they won't be the next Apple. Just ask VW, they almost bet it all on EVs and now they're already with one foot in the grave because of that.
They bet the farm on hiding diesel emissions before that.
> Just ask VW, they almost bet it all on EVs and now they're already with one foot in the grave because of that.
Not without some coercion. It was part of the settlement from when they cheated on emissions tests by running the engines more efficiently if the steering angle was touched or the non-drive wheels moved.
What about Hyundai? They also went big on EVs and now are competing even in China
CATL has 5C batteries and svolt 6C. BYD also is working on similar tech. So 10 mins should be possible by year end or early next year.
I worked at SE when the iPhone was released and that is not how I remember it. :) The mood was more like "lol, it has no buttons!", "too expensive!" and "it can't work without a stylus!" I think many seriously misjudged how "cool" Apple was back then (and consequently how much they'd be willing to spend on status symbols) and how good a snappy touch ui could be.
Did you work with Symbian/UIQ software, feature phone software or something else? The feature phone team actually showed signs of getting the idea of no-jank and a rich UI very early.
Lund working on feature phones! My job was writing and managing test suites for verifying the J2ME implementation. It was a top secret collaboration with Motorola. They took QA work extremely seriously and bugs could delay major launches. Unfortunately for them, "rock solid J2ME" wasn't really what customers were after. :)
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A lot of people made the same mistake. They didn't understand -- simply couldn't understand for some reason -- that the imperfect iPhone that was launched in 2007 was the worst one that would ever exist.
You see this attitude a lot today. ("AI? LOL, it can't even count the letters in 'Strawberry.'") People have a mental block when it comes to understanding that the value of something new doesn't matter as much as its time derivative.
Not related to phone companies, but some software companies were in denial about it. I remember purchasing one of the first HTC/Android smartphone, and I told my boss at the time that my new cheap phone could replace all the applications of the company but cheaper, more convenient, in my pocket, and without a computer. He made fun of me and laughed. I knew Java pretty well and whipped up a few POCs to see by myself if we were really doomed, but I didn't told anyone about it. In less than 2 weeks I replace the whole company with 2 or 3 applications with crappy UIs. I quit in less than a month and the company obviously closed soon after that because that was the only sensible thing to do.
In the very end. It all boils down to who got the developers on platform for free. ( From Apple's context, while devs cost a lot, they just marketed well and even made them pay something to list apps )
Can you elaborate?
My memory is that Apple _charged_ developers to make apps :)
To publish something on a feature phone was much more costly, including five-figure quality approvals. The App Store was a true revolution and probably needed new players that were not as entrenched with carriers like Nokia, and Siemens.
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They still charge those 99$ a year, don't they?
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Imagine Apple even got paid by developers and not pay them
Do you think non-SW engineering types in e.g. Nokia and Sony Ericsson also immediately knew?
I remember a lot of delusion the first year that then turned into bitterness - but I don't have the inside perspective, just hints of it from my then position at a software supplier to both.
As a developer, I remember a few bosses that thought "who needs a stupid phone? no one will buy that" except that Android could already do most of what Windows was capable of, and the bonus was that the SDK was free and Java was an easy language.
They were stuck in their post-Windows 95 world, and did not understand that multimedia CD-ROMs were clunky and dying.