The tech giant is reportedly giving up on its dreams of making an autonomous electric car after a decade of work.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple has halted development on its long-rumored electric car project. Reportedly, the company announced the news internally on Tuesday and said many people working on the autonomous electric car project will be transferred to the Generative AI project instead.
Bloomberg reports that Apple’s chief operating officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, vice president in charge of the project, informed the employees of the cancellation of the project. Some of the 2000 people strong electric car team will shift to Apple’s generative AI efforts under executive John Giannandrea.
There will be layoffs as well, but there is no clarity on how many workers will be affected by this decision. There are a number of hardware engineers and car designers who were on the team, and some of them may have the opportunity to apply for other divisions.
Apple began the electric car project in 2014, codenamed Project Titan. However, Project Titan faced many challenges right from the beginning.
Earlier this year, there were rumors that Project Titan had been scaled back, with the company abandoning its plans for a fully driverless car. Instead, they shifted their focus to an electric vehicle with some self-driving technology, just like Tesla. They were looking at 2026 to release the car, but those plans are now canceled.
Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook also confirmed that Apple is working on generative AI features and may launch them later this year. The company has been hiring for AI roles and has posted various job listings in the last couple of months. Some reports also suggested that Apple plans to spend over $1 billion every year on generative AI development.
