Apple is reportedly abandoning its decade-long efforts to build electric cars and ramping up its efforts on generative AI projects.
Apple announced the plan internally on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said. bloombergwhich rattled the roughly 2,000 staff working on the self-driving car, which was originally scheduled to be released in 2026.
The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Vice President Kevin Lynch, who is overseeing the effort, people told Bloomberg.
Two Apple executives told employees that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is cutting back on the team working on the car, known internally as the Special Projects Group (SPG). The department will be transferred to the artificial intelligence department, he said.
Those staffers will now focus on generative AI projects under executive John Gianandrea, according to Bloomberg, but Apple has a $10 billion multi-year deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Google. is aiming to catch up with Microsoft. I’m currently stuck in a quagmire over the “woke” Gemini text-to-image conversion software.
Hundreds of other people at SPG, many of them hardware engineers and automotive designers, will either apply for other jobs within Apple or be fired.
It is unclear how many people will be laid off.
Apple representatives did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
According to Bloomberg, the decision to scrap Project Titan began in 2014 with the goal of developing fully self-driving cars with luxurious interiors and voice-guided navigation.
But Project Titan has struggled almost from the beginning. When Apple conducted test drives around its Silicon Valley headquarters in 2022, it frequently hit curbs, veered into the middle of intersections, and nearly hit joggers. , I had a hard time navigating the road.
A revolving door of departing executives also plagued the program.
Williams and Lynch took over the business several years ago after Doug Field, now a senior Ford executive, retired, according to Bloomberg.
Renowned scientist Ian Goodfellow, who led Project Titan’s machine learning division, also left the company in 2022.
Apple’s self-driving car will initially have no steering wheel or pedals, and its interior will be designed around hands-off driving, unlike self-driving cars being developed by rivals such as Google-backed Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise. was intended.
Trouble along the way meant ambitious plans, including adding a steering wheel and pedals, were scaled back, and the launch was pushed back from 2025 to 2026, although a price tag of $100,000 was still expected.
Meanwhile, Apple launched its long-awaited Vision Pro earlier this month at an eye-popping price of $3,500, but customers are reportedly returning the VR headset just weeks after purchasing it.
More than 200,000 pairs of these revolutionary goggles were sold on pre-order before they went on general sale on February 2nd.
But while some enthusiasts say the Vision Pro will revolutionize the tech industry, other angry buyers have complained of extreme headaches, nausea, motion sickness and “eye strain.” I have already returned it to the Apple Store.
