Apple Car

In February this year, we learned that after more than a decade of work, Project Titan – the Apple Car effort was officially canceled. Naturally, details have been sparse around the topic as it was a secret project. But today an interesting detail has surfaced about how Apple is dismantling the project.

With Apple now having dragged its decade-long car project to the trash can, the company is reportedly now working on another skunk-works project: an Apple Robot.

Both self-driving cars and home robots have a lot in common. They have long been a science-fiction dream, and nobody has come anywhere close to realizing that dream. But a truly useful and capable domestic robot is an even bigger challenge than an autonomous car …

The Apple Car never saw the light of day, but recent reports have revealed that the project known as “Titan” was canceled after 10 years and billions of dollars spent. Apple had ambitious plans for its electric car, like having an advanced autonomous driving system. And to make this a reality, the company reportedly developed a chip equivalent to four M2 Ultras combined.

While many concept designers gave us their takes on an Apple Car design before the project was finally abandoned, a new piece suggests that the reality would likely have been less sporty than most of them envisaged.

With Apple originally aiming for Level 5 autonomy – with no steering wheels or pedals – the main designs created within the company were less sportscar and more minivan …

As you may be familiar with by now, Apple has officially canceled its project to build an electric car. The project never saw the light of day and wasn’t even confirmed by Apple, but the company had been working on its own car since 2014. Following reports that Apple had approached Tesla for a partnership, we now know that the company has also talked to Mercedes-Benz about building an Apple Car together, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that the Apple Car project is officially dead after more than a decade of work. In a new story today, The New York Times shares additional details on the turmoil inside the Project Titan team, based on conversations with “a half dozen people who worked on the project over the past decade.”

Some of these details were previously reported by NYT technology reporter Tripp Mickle in his After Steve book.

As someone who’s been covering the ins and outs of Project Titan for the past decade, I can’t say I’m surprised by this week’s news that the infamous Apple Car has been cancelled.

My hope, however, is that the death of Apple Car means there are good things to come for CarPlay users.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard it reported that the Apple Car is cancelled, but yesterday’s Bloomberg report does seem definitive – with two very senior Apple execs said to have made an official announcement to the Titan team.

But while it may be dramatic news in one sense, after the company spent a huge amount of money over more than a decade, the evidence is that AAPL investors were almost entirely unmoved …

Bloomberg reports that Apple has officially canceled its effort to build an electric car. The move was announced internally by Apple COO Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, who had been leading the Apple Car project since 2021.

“Apple’s most senior executives finalized the decision in recent weeks,” the report says. The project had reached a “make-or-break point” inside Apple, with Tim Cook also facing pressure from shareholders to make a decision.

My colleague Zac wryly observed that the Apple Car has been four years away for nearly nine years now, following a report suggesting it will go on sale “as soon as 2028.”

That report also suggested that Apple has massively downgraded its ambitions, to something on a par with a Tesla, leading to critics referring to it as a “me too” product …

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was on a flight bound for San Francisco, preparing to attend a Sonos summit in San Jose, with bad plane wifi. The date was September 21, 2015. CNBC was on-air discussing an accelerated release date for the Apple Car: 2019.

Project Titan, the Apple electric car project, has been underway since 2015. But the project has faced numerous delays and repeated executive turnover. Initially planning to make a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, those lofty ambitions have come crashing down to earth in recent years.

With Apple VP Kevin Lynch leading the project since 2021, the company has set a new release date for the launch of its first vehicle: 2028. That’s according to a new report today from Bloomberg.

Airbags have been proven to save lives, but an Apple Car airbag system presents a new challenge – one which could be solved by a new approach, says the company.

Airbags have been around for a long time. The first one to be fitted to a car dates back to Chevrolet Impala with a customized Oldsmobile dashboard in 1973, followed by an Oldsmobile Toronado, and they’ve been required by law in all cars sold in the US since 1998. That’s with good reason …

After slimming its autonomous vehicle program in early 2023, Apple is adding back test drivers. Here’s how Apple’s self-driving car testing efforts look as it begins 2024 – amid the Apple Car project remaining at a stand-still.

Apple’s long-running, often-maligned Apple Car project is once again said to be falling apart. A new report today from Ming-Chi Kuo says that Project Titan “seems to have lost all visibility at the moment.” This leads Kuo to believe that Apple is likely nowhere close to actually debuting a car to the public.

Apple has been granted a patent for a retractable steering wheel and pedals in a car, when it is being used in self-driving mode.

The patent document describes a car which is capable of driving itself in some situations, but not in others – which seems a likely interim stage for both the technology and the law …

One of the top executives working on Apple’s Project Titan self-driving car team is being sued by the SEC. Bloomberg reports that SEC is suing Ulrich Kranz “for allegedly breaking securities rules” during his time as CEO at the electric car startup Canoo.

One of the features of Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup acquired by Apple back in 2019, was the use of external displays intended to let pedestrians and other road users know what the car was doing. A new patent for Apple Car external displays shows how the Cupertino company might improve on this tech.

Drive.ai first fitted external displays to its test vehicles back in 2016, and improved on them in 2018, but Apple thinks more needs to be done …

At the start of 2023, Apple had its largest staff ever of drivers registered to test its autonomous vehicles in California. Then in April, Apple cut the team back significantly. Now in the latest update on Apple’s autonomous vehicle efforts, the program has returned to adding drivers.

At the beginning of the year, Apple hit a high point with 201 drivers registered for its autonomous vehicle testing. Now data from the California DMV shows that Apple has made a significant staffing change by eliminating 56 drivers from the pilot program.