A New Type of Car Which Should Be Great for Motorcycling.

This is a short essay about what the Apple company might be planning for their Next Big Thing. First, please note I am not an Apple 'fan-boy’ and have not spent even one second doing any actual research on this, so what follows is mostly made-up storytelling.

I was recently daydreaming (thanks pandemic!) when a bunch of ideas came into my imagination sort of all-at-once and suddenly I thought I might somehow be able to guess what this new Apple car might be like, why it would be good for motorcycling and about when it might be introduced. Maybe sometime in 2022. The background for this fantasy starts with how it is semi-generally known that for the second time in the last decade Apple is working on creating a car. Based on their history it would need to be revolutionary.

Projecting forward from that, here are five background pieces:

• Apple historically likes to mashup existing technologies to create entirely new kinds of consumer products. Co-founder Steve Jobs was an intuitive genius at this, and his goal was to create spectacular new things. This still is a core part of the company culture, and at the moment Apple has huge money available for developing complex new things. Creating an all-new kind of car would certainly be that.
• A few years ago (five?), Apple spent a lot of time and money researching and developing an Apple car then suddenly shut the entire program down. The impulse to make cars has been within the company for some time. The first time around maybe they didn’t quite fathom the kind of mashup needed, or they felt the timing was wrong, but for a bunch of reasons maybe now they believe they do know. It feels to me like this might be the right time. Timing is everything.
• The incredible success of Tesla has completely and unequivocally validated consumer acceptance of, and interest in, revolutionary kinds of electric cars.
• Three wheeled road vehicles have never been widely popular and thus have never been as intensely regulated as four wheeled vehicles (safety, emissions, everything), but Polaris and a few others have taken advantage of this quasi-loophole by successfully producing a variety of recreational road-legal three wheelers.
• Apple has long enjoyed strong IP, industrial, political and manufacturing trade relationships in China, and China has a great political and economic interest in dominating the world’s technological future.

The result of the above (and other items not listed) is that Apple may fairly soon enter American and world car markets with a very advanced electric powered three-wheeled car mostly made in China. This all-new vehicle should be just as sophisticated, fast, comfortable, fully self-driving and ‘cool' as a Tesla but in some intentional ways it should also be even more revolutionary. It could be slightly less costly, though not a lot, because its content, innovation and feature levels would be substantial. It should probably seat four, have about a 200-mile range and a top speed of around 100 miles per hour.

The CEO of Apple today is one of the world’s best logistics people. Co-ordinating the near-instant roll-out of an all-new type of car would be a perfect make-a-dent-in-the-universe assignment for such a logistical genius. Right now through some shell company having no obvious association with Apple they may already be quietly buying and leasing locations for a bunch of wholly Apple-owned car stores, and also to support all the recharging infrastructure which would be needed.

Apple’s three-wheel cars would need to look and work a lot better than all prior three-wheel cars. The full Apple-Bauhaus design ethos would be applied, so much so the first examples appearing in teaser marketing would be odds-on favorites to be painted (and molded) in white. And even though crash-testing is not required for three wheelers, these cars should be fully air bagged. Some impressive videos of how well the vehicle performs in crashes should be available, for anyone curious enough dig a little.

What does any of this have to do with Aerostich and motorcycles? Only one thing, but it’s a ginormously huge thing: Any three wheeled Apple car probably would be engineered to lean into corners. It would ride on three regular profile car tires which would always stay more-or-less perpendicular to the road, but it would also contain a Segway-like balance chip connected to an instantly adjustable suspension which would automatically tilt the body and its ‘skateboard’ chassis far enough during cornering so everyone riding inside would feel safe and comfortable. Maybe as much as fifteen or twenty degrees if one was really hurrying.

Imagine witnessing an Apple car weaving through traffic and taking corners by leaning just like a slaloming skier or motorcycle rider. That’s the key. Almost everyone seeing this from their conventional vehicle should want to experience the feel of that ride. Thus, it’s easy to project Apple’s pioneering corner-leaners instantly becoming a cult-curiosity and then fairly quickly transitioning into an “I want one of those” thing. Mainstreaming should soon follow. These fully autonomous-driving electric three wheeled leaners would inferentially and by example teach almost everyone to accept (and possibly enjoy) a fundamental reason why we love our inherently unstable motorcycles and bicycles.

Apple’s revolutionary leaning three wheeled cars, if they happen, and if they’re as successful as many other recent Apple products, would help normalize leaning into turns, and this (normalization, finally!) should lead to even more motorcycle and bicycle riders. I wonder if Jay Leno will have the opportunity to purchase the first one.

Ok, now I’m done. Thoughts welcome.

PS – Important analogy: 3.2 beer is very nice, but most beer drinkers prefer the full-strength stuff. I’d probably be among those who would want to own a snazzy Apple self-driving electric ‘leaner’, but no matter how cool that ride (and everything else about it) might be, I know I’ll continue to prefer leaning into corners full-strength. By riding there.

PPS – This was typed on an Apple MacBook Air.

Mr. Subjective, 1-15-21