In the early hours of this morning, a foreign ** disclosed a blockbuster news: Apple will abandon the 10-year electric car manufacturing plan, and many employees in the 2,000 people in the car team will transfer to the AI department. Hardware engineers and designers may be transferred or laid off, and the extent of the layoffs is not yet clear. The news sparked shocks and heated discussions in both Chinese and American tech circles. Musk, the founder of Tesla, posted a salute and smoking emoji on social ** (everyone who understands what this expression means). 
Li Xiang, founder of Li Auto, said that Apple's decision to give up building cars and focus on artificial intelligence is an absolutely correct strategic choice, and the timing is also appropriate. Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi Group, expressed shock. Apple is always looking for the next epoch-making product like the iPhone. In the past five years alone, Apple has invested $113 billion in research and development and exploration of various new technologies. Smart hardware and automobiles are seen as a driving force with high hopes. Since 2014, Apple has embarked on the "Titan Project" (the children of the gods of heaven and earth in Greek mythology, who once ruled the world): to create a fully automatic electric car with a luxurious interior and voice navigation, without pedals and without a steering wheel. 
Apple CEO Tim Cook has high hopes for the Titan Project, and he hopes to prove that in the post-Jobs era, Apple is still innovating and capable of launching a new generation of "super things". Apple has injected huge amounts of money into the Titan program, which has cost billions of dollars (tens of billions of yuan) over the past decade. However, the project has not been smooth, with multiple leadership changes, multiple strategic adjustments, and a high employee turnover rate. Although the testing of autonomous driving has not stopped, frankly, there has been no breakthrough. According to California's road permit for self-driving cars, Apple's test vehicles must be tested on the road with a safe driver. Test vehicles from Alphabet's Waymo and Amazon's Zoox were allowed to be tested on the road without a safe driver. Obviously, in the eyes of regulators, Apple's self-driving technology has not yet reached the level of its competitors. Moreover, the total mileage tested by the Apple car is much lower than that of more advanced competitors. In California alone, Waymo has conducted 3.7 million miles of self-driving tests with safe driver supervision, 1.2 million miles of unmanned self-driving tests, and 1.6 million miles of self-driving tests with passengers. Waymo is also conducting autonomous driving tests in Arizona, Texas and other states. Even Cruise, GM's already troubled self-driving company, tested nearly 2.2 million more miles in California in 2023 than Apple. Due to the lack of a substantial breakthrough in technology, at the beginning of this year, there was news of Apple's internal "downgrade" of the car-making project. The requirements of the high-level for products have shrunk from fully autonomous driving without human intervention to the realization of advanced assisted driving like Tesla and Mercedes-Benz. Now, the project is dissolved, I am afraid that the top management has recognized two realities: first, it is difficult to reach the current level of Tesla and Mercedes-Benz, and no one may pay for it; Second, AI costs too much money, and it can't be carried by Apple as rich as Apple, so there is only one choice between car building and AI. Betting on the wrong track is not as simple as wasting money, it may be to get off the table. According to the "Knowing the Danger" analysis, there are several factors for Apple to give up making cars: first, the U.S. electric vehicle market is cooling down, Tesla, UBS have issued warnings, and the growth rate of the electric vehicle market will be greatly reduced this year; Second, if Apple wants to hold on, the car can be built, but it can't launch a product that is leading in all aspects, which is not in line with Apple's consistent style; Third, only by selling enough cars and obtaining enough driving data can we make autonomous driving more mature and perfect. And Apple's attempt to improve autonomous driving by collecting data from test cars is obviously unrealistic. 
There are also comments that Apple's abandonment of the car-making plan indicates that pure electric vehicles in Europe and the United States have cooled down in an all-round way, and hybrid vehicles may become the focus of major car manufacturers. Mercedes-Benz and Audi have also announced plans to slow down pure electric vehicles this year and re-increase the size of gasoline vehicles. Apple is said to be spending hundreds of dollars a day to train its own AI large language model, Ajax (Ajax is a super-notch warrior in Greek mythology who resembles Xu Chu, but lacks strategy) and will launch a generative AI product later this year. Apple's stock price rose 1% after announcing that it would abandon its plans to build cars, and analysts believe that it is a good strategic choice to abandon car building and switch to AI given the revenue generated by AI.