By John Moltz
March 1, 2024 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Apple cancels car project!
Apple has canceled its car project!
Apple cancels car project!
I’m so old I remember when the Apple car was coming in five years.
Technically, you’d only have to be nine years old to have been alive when people were saying that, but then there’s the issue of cognition and when earliest memories form… Well, you get the point.
Anyway, time’s up. In a step we haven’t seen since 2019, Apple has canceled a product development project. If you’re a fat cat automotive executive who said the PC guys were not just gonna knock this out, give yourself an extra dollop of caviar on that cracker.
“Apple to Wind Down Electric Car Effort After Decadelong Odyssey”
Were these wind-up cars? No wonder they killed the project. But, man, think of the carbon neutrality of a wind-up car.
Despite several strategy pivots, Apple has ultimately determined it simply couldn’t make the car it really wanted to make: one that was fully autonomous. Not without running a bunch of people over, anyway. Sure, they could probably make a standard electric car, but what would be different about it? Or different enough that it would be worth the Apple price premium?
It’s one car, Michael, how much chamfering can you put on it?
Apple cancels car project!
If you want to take a drive down memory lane about Project Titan, The New York Times has a retrospective on it.
“Behind Apple’s Doomed Car Project: False Starts and Wrong Turns”
Because it’s a car project. Yeah, you get it.
Apple had burned more than $10 billion on the project…
That sounds like a lot but remember, this is Apple. They can’t make an omelette without breaking some Fabergé eggs.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Tripp Mickle article without at least a soupçon of Apple doom.
The car project’s demise was a testament to the way Apple has struggled to develop new products in the years since Steve Jobs’s death in 2011.
Apple Watch. AirPods. HomePod. TV+. Vision Pro. All in 13 years. But… you know… other than those things, what have they developed? Practically nothing.
…it festered and ultimately fizzled in large part because developing the software and algorithms for a car with autonomous driving features proved too difficult.
But Elon Musk said fully autonomous driving is only six months away! He said that for like 10 years!
Ohhh, I see, right. I get it now.
Early ideas for the car were maybe a little too optimistic.
It had no steering wheel and would be controlled using Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri.
They still haven’t found several of those early prototypes. The Pacific is a big ocean.
After that the project seems to have changed focus and mangers several times, before finally being canceled. When even the loving but meaty-handed ministrations of Bob Mansfield can’t save a project, you know it doesn’t have a chance.
Apple cancels car project!
OK, so the car project has been canceled. (Have you heard?) But what does that mean for those of us still stuck in this stupid Apple-car-less timeline? Don’t worry, they’re not throwing out the AI baby with the car bathwater.
“Tim Cook Says Apple Will ‘Break New Ground’ in Generative AI”
This would be the ground where they salted over the car project, as Apple has indicated that some of those working on Project Titan would be moving over to AI while others would be moving to…uh, unemployment.
It’s a smart, if belated, move to focus on things that are achievable with AI rather than things that are not achievable with AI. Apple tries a lot of things that never see the light of day; that’s part of how it comes up with great products, so you can’t fault it for trying.
Adding an extra space to my garage? That’s on me.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]