2024-02-28 01:19:44
According to media reports, Apple is giving up on developing its own electric car. The project’s nearly 2,000 employees were surprised by the announcement on Tuesday, according to the financial service Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. Many of them should work on artificial intelligence in the future, it was said, citing informed people. There was initially no comment from Apple on the report.
The decision was sealed in Apple’s executive suite in recent weeks, wrote Bloomberg. It was previously said that Apple’s board of directors had asked CEO Tim Cook and current project manager Kevin Lynch for clarity regarding the plans following the policy changes and billions in spending in the past.
The iPhone company traditionally keeps a low profile when it comes to potential future products. There have been rumors surrounding Apple’s car project for years. The group is said to have shown initial prototypes to potential partners from the automotive industry years ago, but then, according to media reports, it was decided to focus on software for autonomous driving. All that was definitely known was that until recently Apple had been sending test cars converted into self-driving vehicles onto the streets in Silicon Valley. Former Tesla manager Doug Field, who was appointed project manager, went to Ford in 2021, where he is responsible for the electric car business.
Recently, the outlook for electric car sales has clouded over, especially in Apple’s home market of the USA. The pioneer Tesla, which has grown explosively in recent years, has not yet dared to forecast sales for this year. Car giants like Ford, which mobilized resources during the corona pandemic to chase Tesla with electric versions of their large pickups and SUVs, have recently slowed down their loss-making production of electric vehicles. Their US customers currently prefer to buy petrol and hybrid models – following all, this replenishes the coffers of the top dogs. On the other hand, Tesla challengers such as Rivian and Lucid, which are purely focused on electric cars, have no additional source of money to offset their losses.
Some of the developers from Apple’s car team will work on software with artificial intelligence in the future, wrote Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, citing informed people. They should therefore focus on the hot topic of generative AI: programs like the chatbot ChatGPT, which can generate new content based on a huge amount of recorded information. Apple’s activities in this area have so far been less visible than Microsoft, for example, which concluded a pact with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Apple’s car team also includes several hundred hardware developers, as Bloomberg reported. They might be placed in other departments. But there will also be layoffs.
Bloomberg wrote just regarding a month ago that Apple had scaled back its ambitions in developing the electric car and was now aiming for a market launch in 2028. Instead of building a largely self-driving car, the iPhone company wants to make do with driving assistance functions, it was also said, citing informed people.
With a launch in 2028, Apple would not have been the first electronics company with its own car: Sony wants to bring the electric vehicle it developed together with Honda onto the market under the brand name Afeela in 2026 and is already exhibiting the car in the USA.
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