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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

It’s actually pretty impressive that they’re spending that much on R&D and still manage to make the next product worse than the previous one.

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Most of it is likely going to unannounced products like the rumored Apple car and and the rumored AR product.

I really don't understand how Apple hasn't used it's cash pile to buy Tesla. It seems like a pretty dam good fit.

I wonder about this too. Although Apple rarely makes big acquisitions. Elon’s not the kind of guy who will cede away control and Apple loves control. Plus Apple’s chief “Taste person” and chief designer have left so it’s no longer a product company. It’s a squeeze the Juice kind of company.

I’m bearish on Apple too.

> I really don't understand how Apple hasn't used it's cash pile to buy Tesla.

All you need to understand is that they haven't. Assuming Apple is still a sound and rational company pursuing a similar line of business, that should speak volumes to you.

Apple raising prices on their phones so 1k was probably an irrational choice. It's amazing how they are repeating history of the first time jobs was ejected from apple and they reduced innovation and were on the way to death until he came back and saved them with nextstep.

Tesla has miserable margins, by Apple's standards.

I'm not sure if the US is the same as the UK, but here there are tax incentives [1] to classify, or interpret as much engineering time as possible as R&D.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-dev...

As hiring pools get bigger, the pressure to "just fill seats" increases to strong diminishing returns on investment. 5x R&D spending means probably more like 2x R&D output, with a lot more noise in the design and development processes that create opportunities for bad ideas to filter through all the way to production.

R&D won't be the next product, it'll be probably minimum 5 years out, and up to 20-25.

It's both.

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