Apple declined to comment.
Despite increased testing over the past year, Apple’s automotive efforts have lagged far behind other industry leaders.company DMV records show it only had permission to be driven and tested in California by a person behind the wheel at all times. This compares to the current leader in this space, Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, which has been offering fully driverless robotaxis to customers in San Francisco and Phoenix for several months.
Experts praised Apple’s increased testing in California as a vote of confidence in the potential of self-driving cars, given the significant impact Apple and its technology have on consumers’ lives. News that Apple is scaling back the project could end years of speculation about what the company plans to do with self-driving cars. The plan has changed many times over the years and has faced many delays.
Apple originally planned to develop a fully self-driving car, but that ambition has been watered down and the company is reportedly working instead on driver assistance features like those popularized by Tesla.
The roughly 2,000 employees who worked on the project, known internally as Project Titan, were shocked by Tuesday’s news that the company was ending the project, according to Bloomberg. The decision came after the company conducted more than 450,000 miles of vehicle testing in California from December 2022 to November 2023. That mileage was more than triple that of the previous year, the largest increase among the companies testing the most in the state.
Public records also show the company was actively testing in California this year.
In January, for example, the company was testing cars in self-driving mode in Castro Valley when a nearby semi-truck created a draft that sent road debris flying into its path. And earlier this month, Apple was testing a car on a highway in Sunnyvale when it was struck by a piece of metal in the road.
Both accidents caused minor damage to the test vehicle, records show.
