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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Some sites are reporting that 600 people are working on the project and they will be tripling that number to 1800 people:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/21/apple-has-target-s...

[Update]

Actually, the WSJ also reported. Guess other sites are reprinting.

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Even 1800 people working on the project wouldn't indicate that Apple takes the project seriously.

The number of BMW employees in R&D at the headquarter in Munich is about 20000. There are another 10000 contractors working onsite. This are the numbers for R&D only, not including production. The numbers also don't include the employees of the numerous suppliers.

In addition to that:

BMW is an established car manufacturer. They don't need to develop a car from scratch.

BMW is one of the smaller car manufacturers, I don't have numbers for VW or Toyota.

I think it would indicate that Apple takes the project seriously. Apple has 115,0000 employees altogether, but I'm pretty sure that includes vast numbers of people in the Apple Stores. Certainly it's not going to put together a 30,000 person R&D group.

Now, maybe it means that Apple is kidding itself about its ability to make a good electric car. But Tesla didn't have 30,000 people in R&D.

I'm really at a loss as to why you would compare them to BMW and not Tesla. At this stage it looks like they are in line with an early Tesla.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/314768/number-of-tesla-em...

Fair enough, Tesla would have been a better benchmark.

I wanted to point out the huge R&D effort a car company has to undertake even to stay relevant. We are not even talking about the amount of innovation Apple or Tesla are expected to bring to the table.

Another difference between Tesla and Apple is that Tesla has strong partners in the traditional auto industry, namely Toyota and Daimler.

At the same time, apparently less than 3000 people developed the Tesla Model S [1], and less than a thousand developed the Tesla Roadster [2]. That might not be an entirely fair comparison.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Overview

[2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/314768/number-of-tesla-em...

Tesla would have been a better benchmark than BMW. I believe comparison is not entirely fair for the following reasons:

The Tesla roadster was developed together with Lotus and there were only 1000 units produced. Producing a one-off small batch series is in another ballpark than real mass production.

For the later models Tesla partnered with Daimler and Toyota. Toyota produces more cars on a single day than Tesla in a whole year.

I'm enthusiastic about what Tesla does but if they want to play with the big guys they'll have to grow up.

"1800 people working on the project wouldn't indicate that Apple takes the project seriously"

>Even 1800 people working on the project wouldn't indicate that Apple takes the project seriously.

Depends which 1800 employees and how well paid they are.

That doesn't mean a thing, because BMW is a dinosaur. In 2004-2007 Nokia spent nine times in R&D vs. Apple: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/14/nokia-outspent-a...

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