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 …
Apple Car is cancelled
Bloomberg reported the news yesterday.
Apple Inc. is canceling a decadelong effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.
Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.
Apple hasn’t officially commented, and may not do so, given that it never officially confirmed it was ever working on the project in the first place.
AAPL price briefly and modestly spiked
Bloomberg reported that the news had an impact on AAPL’s share price.
The move came as a relief to investors, who sent Apple shares climbing Tuesday after Bloomberg reported the news. The stock was up about 1% at $182.63 by the close in New York.
While that may be technically true (HT John Gruber), it effectively amounted to a collective shrug. A 0.8% rise is well within the range of normal variations, and by pre-market trading at the time of writing the rise is a barely-discernible 0.18%.
That clearly indicates that whether investors were Apple Car bulls – hoping for big returns in the future – or bears, seeing the project as a waste of money, they weren’t factoring the project into their valuation of the company, nor their assessment of its future prospects.
It may help that Apple recently entered a whole new product category, with Vision Pro placating those who felt it was important for the company to expand into new markets.
Photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash
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