3 Reasons Why Apple Abandoned the Apple Car, Its Electric and Autonomous Vehicle

Manzana canceled development of its own electric car after ten years of trying to launch it. Known as Project TitanThe idea was to develop a car that reflects all the principles of the company, as well as all the technologies and, above all, innovations of which they are capable.

The cancellation has sparked all sorts of speculation, especially since after nearly a decade of development, the electric mobility sector has grown at a breakneck pace. And also because some brands like Xiaomi, with an initial investment of 10 billion dollars, managed to assemble a prototype and start selling their first electric car in the next two to three years.

But what happened? Why did Apple ultimately abandon the electric car project? It’s hard to speculate on the motives and what’s going on inside the company, especially since it’s a product that was never released. But the report from The newspaper “New York Times delves into the reasons why this happened.

Over these nearly ten years, it is estimated that Apple has invested a similar amount to Xiaomi, ten billion dollars, in the project. Much of the electric car team has been shifted to internal AI initiatives, with full autonomous driving believed to be an important part of the car’s development. But there are many more details.

1. Constant change of management in the project

Throughout the decade Project TitanThe initiative was led by several leaders, each with different views on what they should achieve. The first was Steve Zadesky, who sought to create an electric car that could compete with Tesla, which at the time only produced the Model S—the Model X launched in 2016 and the Model 3 in 2017. But at the same time, Jony Ive wanted a car that could drive completely autonomously.

But in January 2016, Zadeski abandoned the project. Jony Ive and Bob Mansfield took over and began a series of major acquisitions of startups and the hiring of more than 2,000 people, including NASA engineers and star auto industry employees in the US and Europe.

Ive’s goal was to create a car of European design. Sources The newspaper “New York Times They describe it as Fiat Multipla 600, with six windows and a curved roof. The car had no steering wheel or pedals and was 100% controlled by Siri.

But at some point in 2016, Mansfield told the team that the project’s focus would change. From building a car to simply creating software to achieve full autonomous driving. This was the year we started seeing the company’s Lexus vehicles with dozens of sensors driving around California.

In addition, as the report explains, they tried to strike deals with several major automobile companies, including BMW, Nissan and Mercedes, which were likely selling software solutions they developed. These agreements have been very timid in the introduction of CarPlay in some cars of these brands.

Then in August 2018 Doug Field — who worked at Apple as a technical director and moved to Tesla — is returning to the company to lead the project. The company laid off about 200 employees and tried to continue developing software.

But he’s leaving the company again in 2021 to join Ford and lead the company’s electrification efforts. It was then that Kevin Lynch, who had previously led the development of the Apple Watch, took charge of the project. That’s when they decide to turn back and refocus on developing a 100% electric vehicle.

Two years later, after a change in leadership and focus, Apple finally decided to disband the team, end the electric car project and devote more resources to developing artificial intelligence for its devices.

2. The difficulty of achieving full autonomy without your own data and the competition that Tesla represents.

When Apple began developing its own electric car, it was supposed to have fully autonomous driving. It couldn’t be otherwise. Apple is one of the leaders in innovation in Silicon Valley.

These were different times. But as the decade has passed, it has become increasingly clear—not just to Apple, but to the entire industry—that achieving full autonomous driving is an extremely large and time-consuming task.

According to the report, at one point they tried to buy Tesla. The newspaper “New York Times. This reflects statements made even Musk. But ultimately the company decided it was worth the effort to develop its own car and its own technology from scratch.

But here Apple faces a reality that many other tech and car companies have had to face.: To achieve full autonomous driving, a huge amount of data needs to be collected to train artificial intelligence. The only real way to do this is to participate in real car racing.

Analyst Adam Jones of Morgan Stanley believes that if Apple were to offer an electric car for sale, it would have to be released to market to be truly disruptive. no steering wheel and no pedals, 100% autonomous. But according to him Washington PostThe company had just 67 vehicles testing autonomous capabilities between December 2022 and November 2023, driving a total of 724,000 kilometers.

By comparison, the 5.5 million Tesla vehicles circulating around the world record and transmit data equivalent to 2,683 kilometers. every second. That is almost 85,000 million kilometers per year, which can be converted into data to train the artificial intelligence that powers the company’s full autonomous driving.

Jones estimates that in 2030, Tesla’s fleet will drive the equivalent of 643 billion kilometers per year, nearly two billion kilometers per day, or 20,000 kilometers per second, which could be analyzed and used to train artificial intelligence. Although we don’t see it right now, this will give Tesla a huge advantage over any other car company since it will have the largest data set for full autonomous driving and probably one of the most distinctive and profitable elements for the company in the future.

This may be one of the reasons why Apple has decided to focus on electric vehicle development and gradually develop its fully autonomous driving efforts. But given the car’s estimated launch date of between 2028 and 2030, it seems like it has come too late.

3. Apple’s electric car project became an excuse to avoid an outflow of talent within the company.

Another of the report’s most interesting discoveries The newspaper “New York Times Is it that part of the reason the Apple Car project was approved was to avoid a mass exodus of engineers to Tesla and other efforts related to electric mobility or full autonomous driving.

“At that time, the company was getting more and more questions from its most senior engineers about what Apple’s next big project would be. They had just finished developing the Apple Watch and many were looking for something new to work on. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, approved the project in part to avoid an exodus of employees to Tesla,” the report explains.

There was also a lot of pressure from the industry as a whole. In 2014, Tesla began talking about fully autonomous driving, and Google began testing prototypes on the streets of California. Apple didn’t want to be left behind.

The future of technology developed for the Apple Car

Project Apple Car is dead, but many of the technologies developed will appear in other devices and other initiatives of the company. We will see many of them in the next generations of CarPlay, but, according to The newspaper “New York Timeswill also be integrated into future products such as AirPods with artificial intelligence or augmented reality.

At the moment, Apple is completely focused on its next big product, Vision Pro, and the future of spatial computing, where there is a lot of work to be done to miniaturize and reduce the price of the device.