Apple spent more than $10 billion working on the Apple Car over the last decade, according to a report from The New York Times that details the issues the project faced during development. Apple first launched the project in 2014 and let it flounder for more than a decade before calling it off earlier this week.
Money was spent on research and development, along with the thousands of Apple engineers and car experts that worked on the project. Some employees within Apple are said to have suspected that the endeavor was likely to fail from the beginning, and they referred to the car as “the Titanic disaster” instead of its “Project Titan” codename.
Apple CEO Tim Cook signed off on the project, but members of the car team knew that it was going to be close to impossible. An electric vehicle with self-driving capabilities would need to cost at least $100,000, and it would have razor thin margins and stiff competition.
While Apple reportedly held discussions with Elon Musk about a possible purchase of Tesla, the company decided that building its own car made more sense than attempting to integrate Tesla into Apple. Way back in 2014, Musk said that he had “conversations” with Apple, but he said at the time that an acquisition seemed “very unlikely.”
Apple was never able to find the right leader for the Apple Car project. As we detailed in a look back at the Apple Car’s history earlier today, the project had four different leads and was scaled up and scaled back several times over the course of the last 10 years. According to The New York Timesthe ultimate reason that it failed was because Apple was simply unable to develop the software and algorithms for a car with autonomous driving.
The more than 2,000 employees that worked on the car project are being redistributed, some will join other teams at Apple to work on AI and other technologies, and some will be laid off. Apple will take what it learned from the car project and apply it to other devices like AI-powered AirPods with cameras, robot assistants, and augmented reality.
More on the downfall of the Apple Car and some of the technologies that Apple came up with can be found in the full The New York Times report.
Popular Stories
Apple Cancels Electric Car Project
Apple has canceled all plans to release an autonomous, electric vehicle, reports Bloomberg. Apple has been working on an Apple Car for more than a decade and invested millions of dollars into development before deciding it was not a viable project. Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams today told approximately 2,000 employees working on the Apple Car that the project was canceled,…
iOS 18 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhone Models
iOS 18 will be compatible with the iPhone XR, and thereby also the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models with the same A12 Bionic chip, according to a post on X today from a private account with a proven track record of sharing build numbers for upcoming iOS updates. The post was spotted by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris, and it has since been deleted. However, this was likely because the…
iOS 17.4 Coming Soon With These New Features for Your iPhone
In a press release last month, Apple confirmed that iOS 17.4 will be released in March, and the update includes several new features and changes for the iPhone. Key new features in iOS 17.4 include major App Store changes in the EU, Apple Podcasts transcripts, and an iMessage security upgrade. The update also adds new emoji and includes preparations for the launch of next-generation CarPlay…
Game Developers Describe ‘Smell of Death’ Around Apple Arcade
Some game developers are dissatisfied with Apple Arcade amid concerns about the subscription service’s future, a new report claims. Sources speaking to mobilegamer.biz described a “smell of death” around Apple’s games subscription service and noted the difference between the company’s investment in TV and music, and its interest in games. “At the very top of the company there needs to be a …
iPadOS 18 Rumored to Drop Support for These iPad Models
iPadOS 18 will drop support for iPad models equipped with the A10X Fusion chip, according to a post on X today from a private account with a proven track record of sharing build numbers for upcoming iOS and iPadOS updates. This means that iPadOS 18 would not be compatible with the first-generation 10.5-inch iPad Pro or the second-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro models released in 2017. It…
Six Reasons to Wait for Next Year’s iPhone 17
Apple’s iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models concurrently, which is why we sometimes get rumored feature leaks so far ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and already we have some idea of what to expect from Apple’s 2025 smartphone lineup. If you plan to skip…
