Apple’s long-awaited electric car, once tipped to launch in 2024 as a fully autonomous shuttle, has been scrapped, according to reports.
The announcement was made yesterday during an internal meeting by COO Jeff Williams and project boss Kevin Lynch, insiders told Bloomberg, with the pair confirming the project will now wind down.
More than 2000 technicians working on the project will be moved to the firm’s artificial intelligence division, focusing on generative AI projects. However, there are expected to be redundancies, given the team also employs several hundred designers and hardware engineers. Apple declined to comment, reports Bloomberg.
A big reason for the decision was the low margins the car was expected to make compared with profits the brand’s products usually enjoys, reports suggest, especially given the million of dollars that Apple would need to continue spending just to get the car to market.
The same reports suggest, as a result, the car would be priced to around $100,000 (£80,000), again making it a less viable product – a concern raised by board members.
It brings to an end a project that has been marred by setbacks and delays. The most notable came last year when Apple scaled back plans to launch the EV with level-five (full) autonomous driving and instead looked at more common level-two systems, citing difficulties with current technology.
Although no official images of the car have ever been released, it was reported in 2022 that Apple had signed off the design of its first automotive product, showing that there was some progress on the project.
Called Project Titan, it was originally planned to be an MPV-sized automonous shuttle with limousine-style seating, according to earlier reports, but this was subsequently changed to a more conventional design and equipped with human controls.
One of Apple’s biggest stumbling blocks was the car’s platform. As previously reported by Autocar, the brand never formally secured a platform or a manufacturing partner for the car, but the appointment of ex-Lamborghini chassis chief Luigi Taraborrelli suggested it would create its own in-house. However, this never appeared to materialise.