On February 28, the auto industry quickly spread the news that "Apple has reportedly terminated its electric vehicle program". The news comes from some ** reports that cite people familiar with the matter as saying that Apple has decided to suspend its electric car program after a decade of research and development.
This decision has caused a wide repercussion in the industry. Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly took to the public platform to post the news with respectful and playful emojis that seemed to reflect his views on the incident.
In China, many car company executives have also expressed their opinions on this. Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi Group, posted two comments in a row on Weibo, expressing "extreme shock" and claiming, "After Apple withdrew from the car-making competition, the Xiaomi SU7 is undoubtedly the best choice for Apple users looking for smart electric vehicles."
Apple reportedly announced the announcement to employees at an internal meeting on Feb. 27, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees involved in the project. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Vice President of the Program, Kevin Lynch, made the decision together. They informed employees that the project would begin to phase out and that many members of the original automotive team would be redeployed to the AI department, led by John Giannandrea, to focus on the company's generative AI projects, a growing priority for the company. At the same time, hundreds of team members working on hardware engineering and automotive design will have the opportunity to apply for transfer to other teams in the company.
Although Apple has not yet publicly responded to this news, public information shows that Apple's car-building plan began in 2014 and was initially called "Project Titan". Since 2014, Apple has been actively recruiting engineers for the automotive industry, until February 2015, when Mitch Drexler, a member of Apple's board of directors, first confirmed that Apple was working on a car.
However, despite Apple's huge investment in electric vehicles, the project never came to fruition. Personnel changes, project delays, goal adjustments, and other issues continue to plague the project. Eventually, Apple decided to abandon the decade-long car-building project, as well as one of the most ambitious projects in the company's history.
This decision has been widely discussed in the automotive industry. Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his concern about the matter through his personal social accounts, while other car company executives also shared their views on social platforms. Among them, Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, believes that Apple's abandonment of car manufacturing and focusing on artificial intelligence is a strategically correct choice and the timing is appropriate.
Overall, the event not only heralds a major shift in Apple's strategy in the field of electric vehicles, but will also have a profound impact on the entire automotive industry. In the future, we will continue to monitor Apple's latest developments in this area and the overall impact of this decision on the automotive industry.