Apple canceled its car project earlier this week, failing to deliver a viable product after a decade’s worth of work. The company dumped over $10 billion into the endeavor — an ungodly amount of money to burn on a project that would never see the light of day. As it turns out, costs rise when you can’t make up your mind.
According to a new report from The New York Times, the company initially intended to take on Tesla and build an electric vehicle. Then, it wanted to battle Waymo with a self-driving car.
Apple procured engineers from Porsche and NASA to work on the project, which rotated through four different leaders and several different visions. At one point, it even considered acquiring Tesla, talking with Elon Musk about the idea.
More than 2,000 people were working on project “Titan” when Apple allegedly canceled the program this week. By then, the vision for the car was back to being an electric vehicle that would rival Tesla. If Apple had brought the car to market, it would have likely cost over $100,000, despite earlier rumors.
While it seems we’ll never get an Apple-made car, not all of the project’s work will be lost. Many of the team members will reportedly move to Apple’s AI division and apply what it’s learned about artificial intelligence to other products. There is some tech for the car, however, that will likely never see the light of day.
Apple made a new sunroof, for example, that could reduce heat from the sun, and a windshield that could show turn-by-turn directions in its efforts to break further into the automotive industry.
Just because the Apple car is dead doesn’t mean the company is disappearing from the sector. It’s still going strong with CarPlay as it attempts to dominate every possible screen. Expect the company to be involved for years to come, in one way or another.