Sorry, you’ll never be able to drive an Apple Car

According to a new report from Bloomberg citing “people with knowledge of the matter,” Apple is scuttling its long-running electric car project and will shift many of the employees over to Apple’s generative AI work.

The Apple Car, code-named Project Titan, has been something of an open secret for about a decade, with many reports of its existence dating back as far as 2015. Over the years, Apple hired hundreds of people to work on it, and it’s hard to keep that a secret.

As the years passed, the project was delayed multiple times and had changed in scope as often. Originally envisioned as a fully self-driving car with no wheels or pedals, it eventually was delayed until at least 2026 with a reduced scope to “level 2” or “level 3” driver assistance technology (where the car drives only under certain conditions and the driver must be aware and ready to take over). It was never made clear who would manufacture the car, or what its features and specs would be outside of being electric, though it was said to be a luxury car targeting a price under $100,000. The most recent report claims that the timeline had moved back to 2028.

The new Bloomberg report claims that Apple surprised the team of nearly 2,000 employees with news that their project was winding down effective February 27. Many of the employees will be shifted to John Giannandrea’s division in an effort to bolster the company’s generative AI efforts. The Special Projects Group (the name of the group working on Project Titan) also employed many hardware engineers and automotive designers; it is not clear what will happen to these employees, though layoffs are expected.

This seems like a good refocusing of efforts for the company. We’ve always viewed the project to make an entire car as something of a boondoggle for Apple; CarPlay is software and that’s what Apple is good at, but manufacturing and servicing an entire vehicle does not play to Apple’s core strengths and requires entirely new areas of expertise that do not necessarily benefit the rest of the company’s products and services.