The Apple car never made the world.
On February 28, Mark Gurman, a well-known technology journalist, posted an article saying that Apple has decided to abandon the electric vehicle project that has been developed for ten years, and some of the nearly 2,000 employees involved in the car project will transfer to the artificial intelligence department to focus on generative AI projects, which has become another strategic focus of Apple.
And there are also many talents in the Apple Car project, such as automotive hardware engineers and designers, who need to find other positions within Apple within 90 days or face layoffs. In fact, about 5,000 employees were involved before and after Apple's car project, and nearly 2,000 employees were working before Apple announced that it was abandoning car building, and these employees were shocked by the cancellation of the project.
Interestingly, after the news was released, Apple's stock price edged slightly by **081%, which also reflects that the market is not optimistic about Apple's car.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk learned of the news and posted a related post on the "X" platform, and responded with two emojis of "salute" and "light a cigarette". Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, also issued a response, saying that "choosing to focus on artificial intelligence is an absolutely correct strategic choice, and the timing is also appropriate."
Apple's car-building project dates back to 2014, internally codenamed "Project Titan", and plans to create a fully autonomous electric car with a luxury sedan interior and voice navigation capabilities, and in the concept stage, Apple envisions a car that does not require a steering wheel and accelerator pedal, and also plans to develop a remote command center to replace the driver.
It's a pity that Apple's great idea, even ten years later, is still not realized by any car company.
After the establishment of the Titan project, Apple set up an automotive laboratory near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, and within a year, recruited a team of thousands of people, including Tesla, Volkswagen, Ford and other star car companies, including one of Tesla's vice presidents, Chris Porritt.
In 2016, Steve Zadesky, the project leader at Ford, wanted to develop a car with semi-autonomous driving capabilities, while Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer, insisted on developing full self-driving.
Later, the Titan planned to change its leadership, and Apple's series of moves since then showed that Apple's car is biased towards autonomous driving research and development. However, Apple Auto is a bit ambitious in the research and development of autonomous driving, hoping to directly develop an L5 autonomous driving system. At that time, there were indeed achievements, such as obtaining a California driverless road test license, and at that time, someone photographed Apple's self-driving test car in Silicon Valley, although the car was modified from Lexus.
However, then there was news that Apple's car was not going well, such as in 2018, Apple's self-driving car had a car accident. In February 2019, nearly 200 Apple employees working on car projects were suspected of being laid off, and during the same period, Apple's test data scored at the bottom of the California autonomous driving road test report. In February 2020, Apple saw another decrease in the number of self-driving vehicles driving in California.
There has been no results for a long time, which has led to Apple's top management being skeptical about whether the Apple car can become an epoch-making product like the iPhone, and at the same time, they are also dissatisfied with the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the Apple car every year, and demand mass production as soon as possible, as for the level of autonomous driving technology, it will be released first.
Therefore, the progress route of the Apple Car project has always been wavering, which is manifested in the fact that the Apple Car project has changed 8 people in charge in the 10-year car manufacturing career, without exception, without a clear and urgent goal.
Later, it was revealed that Apple Auto took the initiative to adjust the level of autonomous driving technology developed to L3, and hopes to launch its first product in 2025. Then, in January 2024, the release date of the Apple car was postponed again to 2028, and the level of autonomous driving was reduced to Level 2+. At that time, Kevin Lynch, the head of Apple's car-building project, and Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, gave the answer after a series of meetings: "Either the delivery is finalized or the project is canceled altogether." ”
It's just that I didn't expect that the day when the project was canceled would come so quickly, and so far, Apple's ten-year car-making career and nearly 10 billion US dollars of investment have all come to naught.
Recalling that Wei Xiaoli, who announced the construction of a car at the same time, is now a small scale, and Huawei, which has found a new way, has also gained a firm foothold in the automobile market, and even Xiaomi Automobile, which has been in the military automobile industry for three years, has also achieved mass production.
As one of the world's most valuable companies, Apple makes nearly $100 billion a year and has more than $160 billion in cash reserves, but it hasn't even built a production car, which is embarrassing.
Edited by Wen Che.