Under the wave of artificial intelligence (AI), Apple has terminated its ten-year investment in car manufacturing projects.
On February 27th local time, multiple foreign media reported that Apple had disclosed internally that it would stop its electric vehicle project. This decision surprised nearly 2000 employees of the car manufacturing project, with some automotive hardware employees being laid off and some employees being transferred to Apple's artificial intelligence (AI) department.
Apple did not comment on the above news. According to reports, Apple has abandoned a decade long effort to build cars and the most ambitious project in its history, which was once seen as a potential change in the automotive industry.
It is worth mentioning that Tesla CEO Musk shared the news on social media that Apple has stopped making cars, accompanied by two expressions of salute and smoking.
Musk's response on the X platform
As early as 2014, Apple began exploring electric vehicle projects, known as the Titan Project. At its peak, Apple had over 5000 R&D personnel. The news that Apple will seek partners to jointly build cars has also pushed up the stock prices of all potential partners.
Herbert Diess, then CEO of Volkswagen, once said, "The entry of cash rich tech giants into the automotive industry will bring much greater challenges to Volkswagen than traditional competitors such as Toyota."
In February 2021, it was reported that Apple would invest 4 trillion Korean won (approximately 3.6 billion US dollars) in Kia Motors as part of a partnership with Korean car manufacturers to produce electric vehicles. The two companies plan to launch Apple cars in 2024, with an initial goal of selling 100000 cars annually.
But in March 2022, Guo Minggui, an analyst at Tianfeng International who had been following the Apple industry chain for a long time, posted on social media that the Apple automotive project team had been disbanded for some time. If you want to achieve the production target by 2025, team restructuring within 3 to 6 months is a necessary condition. In September 2023, Guo Minggui also stated that the Apple car project had "disappeared". This internal news further proves Apple's pessimistic situation in the car manufacturing business.
According to foreign media reports, Apple has invested billions of dollars in automotive project research and development, and citing project participants, the automotive project team has gone through ups and downs in the past few years, including restructuring and strategic adjustments. Apple has been trying to find the right direction, including proposing cooperation with car manufacturers and even acquiring automotive brands, but ultimately failed.
On the other hand, under the AI wave in the past two years, Apple has been criticized for slow action, and the Siri launched earlier is far from meeting the needs of users. Compared with technology giants such as Microsoft and Google, Apple is much inferior.
During the financial report conference call in February this year, Apple CEO Cook stated that Apple has invested a significant amount of time and effort in promoting its development in the field of artificial intelligence, and will announce specific details later this year. "This type of technology, along with other technologies that shape the future, including artificial intelligence, will continue to invest a lot of time and effort."
Perhaps influenced by the above news, Apple's US stock market fell nearly 0.9% during trading, but since then it has risen as high as over 1.5% and ultimately closed up 0.81%.