Apple has abandoned a decade-long effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the company's history, Bloomberg writes.
Apple made the disclosure internally on Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2.000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement was not made public. The decision was shared by chief operating officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, G4Media reports.
Apple ditches the electric car
The two executives told employees that the project would begin to scale back and that many employees on the team working on the machine — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — would be transferred to the artificial intelligence division under director John Giannandrea. These employees will focus on generative artificial intelligence projects, an increasingly important priority for the company.
Apple's car team also has several hundred hardware engineers and automotive designers. They may be able to apply for jobs on other Apple teams. There will be layoffs, but it's not clear how many, he says profit.ro.
The decision to ultimately end the project is a bombshell for the company, ending a multibillion-dollar effort that would have propelled Apple into an entirely new industry. The tech giant began working on a car around 2014, proposing a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a limousine-like interior and voice-guided navigation.
But the project ran into obstacles almost from the start, with Apple changing the team's leadership and strategy several times. Lynch and Williams took over the enterprise a few years ago — after the departure of Doug Field, now an executive at Ford Motor.