A decade after its launch, Apple Electric car project will end?

According to media reports, people familiar with the matter have revealed that Apple is winding down its decade-long electric vehicle exploration program and shifting its team to generative artificial intelligence.

Apple management made the difficult decision in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. Just a month ago, media reports said the project was on the brink of survival. The latest option discussed internally is to delay the launch of the car until 2028 and reduce the technical specifications of autonomous driving from level L4 to level L2+.

Apple is reported to have cancelled its electric car project

At 3 am Beijing time on Wednesday, Mark Gurman, a world-renowned technology journalist, released a big story: Apple has decided to cancel the electric car project it has been engaged in for more than a decade!

Photo credit: Social media

Mr. Gurman said that Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer, and Kevin Lynch, the company's vice president in charge of the car program, had announced the decision internally on Tuesday, which a person familiar with the matter said "came as a surprise to the program's nearly 2,000 employees."

Two executives told employees that many of the team's employees would be transferred to the machine learning and AI division, led by John Giannandrea, to move to generative AI projects, which are increasingly high on the company's agenda. The hundreds of hardware and automotive engineers on the team will have the opportunity to apply for jobs on other projects, and layoffs are likely.

Apple declined to comment on the news. After the news, on Tuesday afternoon in the United States, Apple shares, which had fallen nearly 0.9% during the day, continued to rebound, and rose more than 1% after the afternoon, as of the close of trading, Apple reported $182.63, up 0.81%, with a market value of $2.8 trillion.

At the same time, in the face of potential competitors withdrawing from the track, Tesla CEO Musk rushed to the "melon front line" for the first time, sending a "salute" and "light cigarettes" comfortable expression.

Apple's 10-year dream of building a car is broken

Apple's car-making history can be traced back to 2014, when approved by Cook, Apple launched the "Project Titan" (Project Titan), and then played the "money ability" heavily from Google, Mercedes, Tesla and other companies to recruit, and formed a core team with Silicon Valley + automotive industry genes.

By the end of 2019, Apple had poached over 300 people from Tesla. Later, because Apple repeatedly swayed in the direction and route of car building, there was no cooperation object and form landing, resulting in a large number of executives involved in the Titan project, and the project stalled several times.

Photo source: Photo by reporter Zhang Jian

In March 2022, there was "bad news" about Apple's car-building project. Tianfeng International analyst Guo Ming𫠓¹ said that month, "Apple's Apple Car team has been disbanded for a while In order to produce Apple Car in 2025, the team will need to be reorganized in three to six months."

By December 2022, Project Titan will have undergone a major transformation. At the time, the media learned that Apple pushed back the target time of launching an electric car by about a year to 2026, saying that Apple's Titan project had been in a state of limbo for months because executives faced the reality that it was not feasible to build a fully autonomous car without a steering wheel and pedals in the current technology environment.

In September 2023, Guo Mingd «“¹ again issued pessimistic remarks, saying that Apple's car project has "disappeared", if you want to "put into production in the next few years", the best solution is to enter the car market through the acquisition of car companies, if not, he doubted that Apple may not be able to mass produce in a few years.

Declaration: This article comes from the National Business Daily .If copyright issues are involved, please contact us to delete.