If I were running a successful company I would stay as far away from selling cars as possible- it can't imagine how bad it is for PR (not to mention your psyche) to suddenly have "Family killed by drunk driver" headlines with a giant color picture of your flagship product, blood-stained and mangled below it.
Our local (Boston area) town police blotter always mentions if a Tesla is involved in so much as a bumper-scrape, whereas no other car brand has ever been mentioned even once.
People don't think that way generally about cars where humans have historically been in complete control, because we associate that with our own driving experience and we're conditioned to it. When it comes to a car brand where crashes occur due to autonomous driving that's different.
It's all about timing and the brand.
Apple coming into the car market will have the same media scrutiny as Tesla. There might be 1000s of Toyota motor vehicle accidents weekly, but if there's one involving a Tesla and particularly one driving autonomously, you can bet it will be on the front page.
It's an enormous PR challenge for Apple if one of their cars kills someone, especially in any autonomous mode. They likely won't be about to stop that from happening completely but either way it's still a challenge they will need to deal with.
Finally, Apple historically have not been associated with building high speed vehicles that can kill people. That is an inherent risk if you are entering the market as purely a car maker.
> Working in software I didn't sign up for something that people will put their lives in the hands of
It really depends. I think it happens more frequently than you thought. From life supporting software and automated planes which are obvious, to suicides caused by buggy software (see the British post bug) but also all the harm that social algorithms or private data leak can do.
In fact, there is a lot of things that can go very wrong with most software systems.
Nobody is excusing the car companies, because there is nothing to excuse. It’s not Toyota’s fault is someone drives drunk and nobody associates the two.
I think it's more than just the coders, it's just like... you know there's going to be a news story about an Apple Car running over a toddler and then right next to it there's a banner ad for the newest iPhone. Bad vibes.
I think it's different when the brand started out as a car company. As grim as it sounds, the public is aware and mostly unconcerned with the idea that vehicles made by the Ford Motor Company are sometimes involved in accidents that kill people.
I don't think that awareness is built in to every consumer brand.
I think more specifically, traditional automaker brands are boring and they garner little public discussion or attention.
Tesla I think is a good example of this -- some have a bad image of Tesla, which is probably in part to their propensity to attract media attention and public hype. When someone puts a Ford Escape on cruise control and crashes, nobody hears about it. If Apple released a car, it would have a ridiculous amount of hype, and ever darn scratch someone put on one would be front page news.
