End of the road for Apple Car development
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APPLE HAS CANNED Project Titan, its decade–long project to develop an autonomous electric vehicle (EV).
The nearly 2,000 staff working on the project were informed at the end of February, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported. He believes some will be laid off but “many” will be transferred to work on generative AI, which Apple CEO Tim Cook recently described as “another technology we believe can redefine the future.” Cook has promised to disclose “the ways we will break new ground in generative AI” later this year.
Although the EV project was never officially announced, its existence was verified by potential manufacturing partners approached by Apple, such as Hyundai, who revealed back in 2021 that it was in talks with Apple about building a car.
Over the past ten years, however, nothing came of Apple’s talks with a whole range of automakers, including Mercedes–Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, and Tesla. Over that period, Gurman comments, Apple “toiled away on at least five different major designs, drove prototype self–driving systems for more than a million miles, [and] hired engineers and designers only to lay them off.” Despite spending “on average, roughly $1 billion annually” on the project, Gurman says, “Apple never got close to realizing its original vision, or any of its subsequent ones. It didn’t get as far as testing a full– scale prototype on public roads.”
Two Chinese smartphone makers did manage to bring EVs to market in 2023: Xiaomi with its manufacturing partner the state–owned BAIC Group, and Huawei with manufacturer Chery Automobile under new brand Luxeed.
Several commentators have put the blame for the failure of the project on indecision and lack of vision from Apple’s leadership, particularly Tim Cook himself. But this downplays the enormous technical challenges of developing an autonomous vehicle and the shifting market conditions for EVs, not to mention Apple’s determination to produce something worthy of the brand, not just ship an also–ran for the sake of it.
Project Titan didn’t deliver an EV, but this doesn’t mean Apple derived no benefits from the investment. Ten years’ work on self–driving must have produced something useful for other applications of AI. Commentators point to big advances in Maps and the evolution of Apple’s CarPlay tech, which will reportedly soon incorporate new features including vehicle monitoring, climate control, and “useful driving related data”.
The ending of the EV project may be part of a larger strategic review. Other projects reportedly scrapped include a rumored MicroLED Apple Watch Ultra —two separate suppliers of MicroLED tech have announced the cancellation of contracts with an unnamed client widely believed to be Apple. Micro
