The report said “many” Apple employees believe Project Titan was an inevitable failure and would be happy to see it end in favor of artificial intelligence efforts.
Apple’s Project Titan effort cost $10 billion over 10 years
Spanning ten years, Project Titan follows a long and winding path through Jony Ive’s self-driving car hopes, a secret race track, and a bid to buy Tesla. The Apple Car project has been canceled for now, but that doesn’t mean Apple won’t be rewarded for its efforts.
According to a report from new york times, at least some Apple employees are happy to see Project Titan end. The project was likely to fail and was sometimes referred to as the “Titanic disaster.”
The concept behind the Apple Car arrived just as Apple was working on the Apple Watch. The company wanted to compete with Tesla and potentially capture a piece of the huge auto industry.
Google and other Silicon Valley companies were targeting electric vehicles, so it seemed natural for Apple to give it a shot. A detailed report from engineers who spoke with Jony Ive and his team makes it sound like a self-driving Apple Car is almost certainly possible and imminent.
Jony Ive is a fan of the Fiat 600 and put one of his customs up for auction in 2013.
After a decade of research, Apple is no closer to launching a fully self-driving car than Tesla. There is one problem that no one has been able to accomplish and that modern “AI” algorithms can account for. It’s another human being on the move.
Fortunately, research on autonomous systems and vehicle AI is highly transferable to other aspects of computing. Apple is said to have invested $10 billion into Project Titan, and none of those funds will be lost, as all of its efforts will help push towards AI.
Reallocation of resources
It was reported that Apple’s abandonment of the car project was not due to engineering impossibility. The company had already moved from Level 4 to Level 2 autonomy. Building electric cars at Level 2 is a given and entirely possible for Apple.
No, the project ended in a close second. Apple will never be able to sell cars at the profit margins it hopes for, especially with the EV market in decline and competitors racing to the bottom.
Some members of the Project Titan team may be fired, while others may be reassigned to the AI project or asked to apply for other positions within the company. If Apple decides to make an Apple Car again in the future, a lot of the groundwork has been done.
