Apple has officially canceled its Apple Car.
According to Bloomberg, the company told employees during an internal meeting that it had scrapped its plans to release an electric car with self-driving capabilities after nearly a decade of planning the ambitious, multi-billion dollar project.
Although the company never officially announced its Apple Car, the product had been tested on public roads. The car would have gone toe-to-toe with EV pioneer Tesla as well as other electric manufacturers such as General Motors Co. and Ford.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the news on X (formerly known as Twitter) with merely a salute emoji and cigarette emoji.
Nearly 2,000 employees who worked on the car project, internally called Titan and Project 172, are reportedly being shifted over into different roles, including Apple’s artificial intelligence division. Bloomberg‘s reporting suggests there will be layoffs, but could not verify how many employees would be affected.
The tech giant reportedly began work on the Apple Car around 2014. From there, lineup changes on the team’s leadership staff and overall strategy played a role in the autonomous car’s demise.
Another contributing factor in the cancellation may have been the lower sales growth for electric vehicles in recent months, thanks to high prices and lack of charging infrastructure.
The Apple Car was reportedly meant to have a price tag of around $100,000 with a potential 2028 release date. However, executives were supposedly worried about the profit margins as well as diminishing returns from spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year on a project that might never debut.
According to the New York Times, Apple has been struggling in recent years to find new avenues for growth now that the iPhone has saturated the market and consumers are upgrading their phones less frequently than before.
Last October, a number of refurbished iPods, which are now considered “vintage retro tech” by Gen Z standards, sold out on Urban Outfitters’ website, Business Insider reported. Maybe Apple should look into that.
