Apple is scrapping its plans to build an electric car. Insiders report this to Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman. Many of the Apple employees who worked on the car will be transferred to the tech giant’s AI division.
Apple COO Jeff Williams announced the news internally on Tuesday, insiders report to the Bloomberg news agency. He did this together with Kevin Lynch, who headed the car project. The two executives told employees that the project is being phased out and that many employees will be transferred to other projects.
“Many” of the nearly 2,000 employees of the automotive team, which was known as the Special Projects Group, will be transferred to the company’s AI division, the sources said. They will focus on developing generative AI. That is an increasing priority for the company; According to rumors, Apple will introduce its first generative AI features in iOS 18, which should be released this fall. CEO Tim Cook recently confirmed that the company will release generative AI features this year.
The team working on the Apple car also included “several hundred” hardware engineers and car designers. They may be able to apply for positions on other Apple teams. Layoffs are also being made, but it is not known how many employees this affects. Apple did not respond to questions from Bloomberg.
There have been rumors going around for years about the arrival of an Apple car. The tech giant has been working on an EV since at least 2014. The company hired several executives, including Christopher Moore, who previously led the development of Tesla’s Autopilot software, and former BMW employee Ulrich Kranz.
However, in recent years the project has seen several rounds of layoffs and several bosses leaving. Christopher Moore left Apple in 2022. A year earlier, Doug Field left. Before working at Apple, he worked on the Tesla Model 3, among other things. Field left to work on EVs at Ford.
Bloomberg reported in January that Apple would postpone its EV until 2028 and scale back its ambitions for autonomous driving. Apple executives recently expected the price of the car to be around $100,000, but were concerned about profit margins and spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on a project that may never reach the finish line, according to Bloomberg.
2024-02-27 19:49:50
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