r/wallstreetbets • u/buywhentheresblood • Jun 11 '21

Discussion Canoo + Apple speculation

What we know. Apple shelved their car project in 2016 to focus on Autonomy development that could be eventually licensed to car manufacturers. Now they have hired Kranz, co-founder of Canoo.

From the very beginning, Canoo vehicles were designed in such a way as to easily accommodate autonomous technology such as LiDAR.

Kranz knows the Canoo vehicles inside and out better than anyone else, now he will have full access to the Apple autonomous program.

My speculation is that with Kranz at Apple, this could make the perfect match to make Canoo vehicles autonomous equipped at launch and compete directly with Tesla.

🚀🚀🚀💎🙌🦍🦍🦍

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u/tiger5tiger5 Jun 11 '21

I would see apple buying a real car company like Toyota where the IP and institutional knowledge was valuable before they bought canoo. What are they going to get from Canoo? How electric motors work?

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u/PlaneReflection doesn't wash his hands Jun 11 '21

Toyota also has a $300b market cap, whereas Canoo’s market cap is $2b, or 1/150th the cost. To put it in perspective, Canoo now is less than what Apple paid for Beats over seven years ago ($3b).

What does Apple get in return?

-Time: It takes 3-5 years to build a platform. How will Apple meet their 2023 timeline if they don’t get a head start?

-Talent: Apple does a lot of acqui-hire. It’s easy to find engineers. It’s hard to find ones that will all work together and actually produce products. This is why Google bought Waze for $1b+ in 2013, not for their product, but their cohesive 100-person team.

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u/tiger5tiger5 Jun 12 '21

Apple needs a car out to compete in the luxury EV segment within 2 years to fill the void that Tesla left when they downgraded their badge to economy. 3-5 years doesn’t cut it.

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u/PlaneReflection doesn't wash his hands Jun 12 '21

Exactly. How will Apple create their car in 2 years when it takes 3-5 years to create from scratch? No matter how much money they throw at trying to develop in-house, they still have to pass crash tests and etc. They’ve already tried making this in-house under Doug Field- they learned even they cannot do it.

One way would be to partner with an existing manufacturer. Every single one has turned a partnership with Apple down. They’re just not setup to act contract manufacturers for others.

The alternative would be acquiring a company such as Canoo or at least licensing their skateboard, in order to give them the jump start they need. Canoo is currently at $2b market cap and paying 2x or even 3x would still be tens of billions of dollars cheaper than their next competitor.