TECH NEWS – It’s been a decade since we’ve heard rumors about what Apple is up to, so a lot of time and money has been wasted.
Apple has been secretly working on a self-driving electric car, dubbed Project Titan inside the company. But after years of pouring resources and manpower into it, the officially unnamed vehicle will reportedly never be finished, and the people working on the project will be reassigned elsewhere by the Cupertino company. So, millions of dollars have been burned by Apple in scrapping its failed attempt to enter the electric vehicle market.
Bloomberg reported that development of Project Titan was halted because it was not viable. Jeff Williams, the company’s chief operating officer, told about 2,000 employees that no more work would be done on the autonomous car, which came as a big surprise to many of them. The affected employees will be redirected to Apple’s Artificial Intelligence department, which is understandable since we will certainly see its content-creating (generative) AI at this year’s WWDC.
So from now on, those working on the self-driving car will report to John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of artificial intelligence. But some will be reassigned elsewhere, which could mean layoffs. Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously said that layoffs are a last resort, but that those with experience only in self-driving cars will certainly have to find work elsewhere.
Project Titan was rumored to be one of Apple’s products in 2026, and would have required no driver for a car with autonomous capabilities. The all-electric car would have competed with Tesla, but there were many problems and setbacks during its development (such as a changed management team that put the focus elsewhere, which meant that the tasks that needed to be done were not completed).
It is not known if Apple will even resume development of Project Titan. Since the company’s automotive experience is negligible compared to Tesla, for example, it is likely that the project will be scrapped and never looked at again.
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