The Apple Car project is dead after ten years, billions of dollars, numerous leadership changes, and dozens of rumors. According to a recent story by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, Apple formally canceled the automobile on Tuesday, informing the approximately 2,000 staff who had been working on it of the development.
According to a statement made by CEO Tim Cook during the company’s earnings call earlier this month, Apple will be moving “many employees working on the car” to the artificial intelligence division where they will concentrate on generative AI projects. Apple is anticipated to share more information about these projects later this year. However, the automobile team also had hundreds of hardware engineers and designers, some of whom Bloomberg claims will be eligible to seek for positions in the company’s other divisions. The others will probably lose their jobs.
Apple has never spoken publicly about its efforts to build a vehicle, internally known as Project Titan. But a number of leaks over the years revealed the company’s ambitions to expand into a brand new product category it had no experience in. At the beginning of the project in 2014, Apple wanted to build fully self-driving car without pedals or a steering wheel with a remote command center ready to take over for a driver. But in recent years, Apple reportedly pared down its ambitions. As recently as last month, new reports suggested that Apple’s car, which could debut in 2028, would be an electric vehicle more akin to a Tesla than something completely new.
Project Titan also went through multiple leadership shakeups. In 2021, Apple appointed Kevin Lynch, the executive who previously oversaw Apple Watch development, to head the car division after Doug Field, Project Titan’s previous head, left for Ford.
Apple had reportedly considered pricing the car at around $100,000, in the ballpark of a high-end Tesla Model X. But Apple executives were reportedly concerned about profit margins at that price. The move is a rare setback for the company, which according to Bloomberg worked on “powertrains, self-driving hardware and software, car interiors and exteriors, and other key components” over the years.
