'Apple Car' will disrupt auto industry, says Morgan Stanley

One possible design for an "Apple Car," as rendered by Motor Trends

Following its prediction that Apple will be a "game changer" in augmented reality, Morgan Stanley researchers see the same happening with the "Apple Car," but at a slower pace. According to two separate investor notes seen by AppleInsider, Morgan Stanley describes Apple as the "ultimate EV bear case," derailing other popular car stocks.

Backing up the recent claim by Bloomberg that Apple will launch a fully autonomous vehicle in 2025, Morgan Stanley's analyst sees few initial sales that year, before growing considerably.

Describing the whole market, not just Apple, Jonas said that he expects"L5," or fully-autonomous vehicles, to take some years to become major sellers.

"We expect... vehicle penetration to ramp very slowly due to a host of technological and moral/legal/regulatory considerations," he said. "By FY25 we forecast L5 fully autonomous vehicle sales to be roughly 100k units with the vast majority being outside of the US."

"By 2030, we forecast L5 sales to surpass 1.8mm units (2% penetration of sales), 0.4% of the global car park and 0.5% of global miles traveled," continued the analyst. "By 2040 we forecast L5 penetration to reach 7.6% of global miles traveled. By 2050 we forecast L5 to approach 47% of miles traveled."

Morgan Stanley also believes that it's unlikely an "Apple Car" will be one that is bought by individuals. Instead, it will be shared in some way.

"We believe a car without steering wheel or pedals must be a 'shared service' and not an 'owned car,'" Jonas said. "To be clear, we do not believe consumers will own title to a fully autonomous car... but will engage in the service as a subscription or transport utility."

Again referring to the entire market instead of solely Apple, Morgan Stanley predicts that global miles travelled in electric vehicles "to grow to 15 trillion miles by 2030 (vs. 12tn today)." The investment back then estimates "20 trillion miles by 2040 and 29tn by 2050."

Morgan Stanley estimates that together, car drivers and passengers "spend more than 600 billion hours in cars every year."

"What's the value of a human hour of time traveling in an Apple car?" asks Jonas. "We don't know. But 600bn hours times anything is a very large number."

Separately, Morgan Stanley's Jonas and Katy Huberty have previously predicted that Apple will have a hand in every detail of the "Apple Car," rather than outsourcing.