Apple Electric Car Project Cancelled After Billions Spent

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Bloomberg reports that the Apple electric Car project has been cancelled after a decade and many billions of dollars spent.

Many of the Apple staff will shift to working on generative AI. There were about 2000 people working on the Apple electric car project.

In 2018, there were around 5,000 employees working on the project. In May 2018, Apple reportedly partnered with Volkswagen to produce an autonomous employee shuttle van based on the T6 Transporter commercial vehicle platform. In August 2018, the BBC reported that Apple had 66 road-registered driverless cars, with 111 drivers registered to operate those cars. In 2020, it was believed that Apple was still working on self-driving related hardware, software and service as a potential product, instead of actual Apple-branded cars. In December 2020, Reuters reported that Apple was planning on a possible launch date of 2024, but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed it would not be launched before 2025 and might not be launched until 2028 or later.

In February 2024, Bloomberg News reported that Apple canceled all plans to release an autonomous, electric vehicle, instead shifting its efforts to generative artificial intelligence.

18 thoughts on “Apple Electric Car Project Cancelled After Billions Spent”

  1. A lot of what they learned will still be of use and, quite possibly, monetizable. So it is very unlikely to be a total loss.

  2. Good for them. There isn’t much money in car making. The Tesla bubble is bursting, Electric cars don’t meet the expectations.

    • Off course there is, battery prices is the only main nottleneck, prices were falling and will fall further, some voices are now even stating solid state will probably arrive late. I think personally you drive a petrol car, i also have a love for them but electric is better in many aspects, currently drive a plugin myself, soon as prices drop to get a decent distance i go full electric. Many brands are now on the verge of bringimg cheaper models.

  3. Possibly they have lots of new IP from their work, and will be able to market/license it off to smaller operators, or hyper local custom car builders. I agree more than ever that the conventional car maker model in the legacy format is dead.

  4. This is more than just an Apple fails story. As Musk tweeted, “The natural state of a car company is dead.” That may soon apply doubly to EV companies, all but two of whom – Tesla and BYD – are losing gobs of money with no end but bankruptcy or reducing production of EVs like the legacy ICE automakers on the horizon.
    BYD is eating the low end, with maybe a handful of other Chinese companies making up the new low end micro-car segment – a segment that didn’t even exist before. These are under $20k, even 10k in the quadracycle segment that includes the Citreon AMI.
    Cook is more of a marketer than an innovator, so surely he knew all this and realized the margins just weren’t there and it would only get worse in the more competitive future with slower growth than projected due to range anxiety and still too high upfront costs on the high end where Tesla dominates. This was about brand preservation.

  5. wow, what a waste…
    But I’m also not that surprised, Apple likes to focus on things with high profit margins to fleece their sheeple.

    • Apple had 7 out of 10 of the top worldwide selling phones last year so by “their sheeple” I takey it you mean “humanity”.

      • Any normal company that spends billions developing a product, only to then realize it’s awful, and has to scrap the whole program, heads would role, but I guarantee Cook remains on top.
        While I’m not a fan of Apple, mainly because they are slow to implement innovation (wireless charging, folding screens, USB-C), I do like that they made the Vision headset, to push AR tech forward.
        They have had an excellent slave labor work force partnership in China with Foxconn for a long time. Who wouldn’t want to live in the same building they work in? 😁 It was a nice addition when they added the suicide nets to prevent workers from offing themselves.

        • I really don’t think you understand how Apple makes products. Please look up the history of the Newton and the iPad.

          In short it is normal for Apple to spend enormous amounts of money developing products over years that may or may not see the light of day and once they see the light of day they may or may not be successful. Apple wants the first version of a product to be a refined product and to do that you have to spend literally billions.

      • I’m sure they have many good patents, particularly for self driving, if their employees can be re-tasked for AI, this could be a goldmine down the road. Success is defined over a longer time period.

      • This is an example of “the majority is often wrong” or at least in this case, susceptible to groupthink fad and status symbols. I say this considering a contract-less Samsung phone can be had at Walmart for $250. Even the gap in camera technology is closing, solidifying the argument that sheeple masses pay $1500 for an iphone. They are the majority, and they are indeed sheep. This tendency of the lazy and unintelligent majority allows wealth to become highly concentrated, and is why Apple is a multi-trillion dollar company, many ten times greater in market cap than Honda (a real manufacturer).

    • Legacy automakers are eventually going to hit the scene with either better battery technology for EVs or hydrogen power. I’m not going to hold my breath for the length of time that will take, but I have a feeling these companies are determined to remain viable, and it won’t be an ICE and oil model, whether people like it or not.

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