Apple abruptly cancels plan to create electric Apple Car after spending billions on the project
Topics: News, US News, Business, Apple, Cars, Electric Cars, Technology, Tesla
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Vanarama
Topics: News, US News, Business, Apple, Cars, Electric Cars, Technology, Tesla
Apple has announced that it is cancelling its plans to produce a car.
The project, called 'Project Titan', had been in development for some ten years, but has now been scrapped.
Around 2,000 employees had worked on the project at Apple, some of them will be transferred to other departments including to the company's AI development team.
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Employees who are not transferred will be laid off by the company.
Apple had reportedly hoped to develop a new form of battery which was cheaper to produce.
The company had also been trying to develop software which would make the car completely self-driving.
Stakeholders in Apple have greeted the news with a 'sigh of relief'.
Dan Morgan is a senior portfolio manager at Apple shareholder Synovus Trust, and told Dailywire: “Apple canceling this project is a sigh of relief for us.
“When you looked at Apple’s future initiatives, the car project was always the most far-fetched for Apple.
"This just isn’t in their wheelhouse.”
The project had also been met with scepticism, with technology analyst Richard Windsor saying last year: “It makes no sense whatsoever for Apple to sell a car.
“Apple makes 40-50pc gross margins on the products it sells, and it will not make that on seats and steering wheels.”
The tech giant had reportedly sunk billions of dollars into the project.
However, it has cancelled the development of the idea as it struggled to catch up with Elon Musk's Tesla Motors.
Musk greeted the news by tweeting an emoji of a salute and a cigarette.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the project had been the subject of a number of periods of restructuring.
These came as the tech company tried to figure out how it could move forward with developing the car.
Some executives at the company had even pitched the idea of purchasing an automotive manufacturer, or at least partnering with one, but the deal never materialised.
Apple's apparent decision to roll back its electric vehicle project comes as demand for electric vehicles remains low.
Mercedes recently announced it would be rolling back on its commitment to only manufacture electric vehicles by 2030.
In its fourth quarter earnings statement, Mercedes said: “Customers and market conditions will set the pace of the transformation.
“The company plans to be in a position to cater to different customer needs, whether it’s an all-electric drivetrain or an electrified combustion engine, until well into the 2030s.”
Apple has also been exploring other avenues outside of its computers, tablets, and smartphones.
The company recently launched the Apple Vision Pro, a headset which uses augmented reality to create displays for the user.