Apple's electric car project has sputtered out after a decade of effort, insiders say. Bloomberg, citing "people with knowledge of the matter," reports that almost 2,000 people on the Project Titan team were surprised Tuesday morning when execs told them that the project was being canceled and some of them would be transferred to Apple's artificial intelligence division to work on generative AI projects, while others could be laid off. TechCrunch reports that all work on the secretive project has come to a halt.
Apple spent billions of dollars on the project—which had 5,000 employees at its peak, according to TechCrunch—but it struggled to make progress as its goals changed over time and leaders came and went. Insiders tell the Wall Street Journal that the company envisioned a fully autonomous vehicle when the project began in 2014 but they later decided on a semiautonomous vehicle with a possible price tag of $100,000.
The move comes amid slowing sales for electric vehicles and Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard believe the company is right to ditch the project. "Apple's decision to abandon electric cars and shift resources toward generative AI is a good strategic move, we believe, given the long-term profitability potential of AI revenue streams versus cars," they said Tuesday. (In 2020, Elon Musk claimed that Apple could have bought Tesla for a bargain price but CEO Tim Cook refused to take the meeting.)
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