On the early morning of February 28th, the news of "Apple abandoning car manufacturing" caused a sensation in the market. But the capital market did not reflect much. Apple's stock price rose slightly after hours on the same day.
In fact, the news of Apple giving up on car manufacturing is not the first to be heard, and Apple has never publicly disclosed its so-called "car manufacturing plan.".
Technology journalist Mark Gurman recently revealed on social media that "Apple has cancelled its ten-year Apple Car program and some employees have switched to generative AI teams." Gurman said that Apple has invested billions of dollars in the Apple Car project, benchmarking against Tesla.
Tesla CEO Musk commented on the news with two emoticons: "Salute" and "Light a cigarette". It took Tesla 17 years to finally become a consistently profitable automotive company.
In 2020, there was market news that Apple was promoting autonomous vehicle technology and planned to produce a passenger car equipped with breakthrough battery technology in 2024. But the latest news means that Apple's goal of "building a car for consumers" may never be achieved.
According to insiders, the news that Apple has completely cancelled its car manufacturing plan and abandoned the research and development of autonomous driving technology is true. Currently, Apple is investing heavily in the development of generative artificial intelligence technology, and many employees have transferred to Apple's AI team. "After all, AI is the disruptive technology of the future," this insider told a reporter from First Financial.
As early as 2017, Apple's car making project, the Titan Project, was exposed to have failed due to the inability of senior management to reach a consensus on car making goals. Cook said at the time, "Apple is developing a major automation project related to cars, but it may not necessarily be just cars. We don't know exactly what it is now." He also said that this plan would be a "long Christmas Eve.".
Since that year, Apple, like many technology companies such as Google Waymo and Uber, has focused on developing autonomous driving technology for other car manufacturers, rather than investing in real car production.
Doug Field, a former Apple employee who had worked at Tesla, returned to Apple in 2018 in an attempt to take over the Titan project. But the project progress was very difficult, and in 2019, Apple laid off nearly 200 employees from the team.
The latest news about Apple's "car manufacturing plan being cancelled" means that after abandoning its car manufacturing production plan, Apple will also abandon the development of autonomous driving technology.
After Apple cancelled its car manufacturing plan, domestic automotive technology company leaders have commented one after another. Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Automobile, stated on Weibo that Apple's decision to abandon car manufacturing and focus on artificial intelligence is the right strategy, and the timing is also appropriate. Xiaomi founder Lei Jun also stated that he was "very shocked" by the news that Apple had abandoned car manufacturing.
Xiao Jianxiong, founder and chairman of domestic autonomous driving company AutoX, told First Financial reporters, "L4 level autonomous cars are very difficult, and Apple has not produced them, so they gave up."
In Xiao Jianxiong's view, most innovation is developed by small companies that focus on a certain field, and then gradually grow into large companies. "GPT was not created by Apple either. OpenAI was very small at the time, and only focused enterprises could become innovative forces in history," he told First Financial reporters.
On the other hand, the reason why the news of Apple giving up car manufacturing has attracted high market attention is also because many Apple fans have been looking forward to seeing the appearance of an "Apple car". Research firm Canalys analyst Liu Jiansen told First Financial reporters, "The market still looks forward to Apple making a difference in the automotive industry, and it's a pity they're giving up now. They're missing a vision. We hope technology companies like Xiaomi can persist because electric cars are becoming more and more of a technology product."
Regarding Apple's latest ambition to enter generative AI, Liu Jiansen told First Financial reporters, "Apple has acquired many AI companies, but in terms of deploying generative AI functions, it has not given the market and users a clear perception. In this regard, Apple needs to actively compete and retain their image as innovators."
Despite the emergence of new technologies in generative AI, Apple remains silent in its investment in artificial intelligence. Although Apple quietly launched the open-source artificial intelligence model Ferret, which can understand images, in October last year, it has yet to release consumer oriented products related to generative AI. The recent release of OpenAI's Sora model has failed to boost Apple's stock price, while technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia have seen significant increases in stock prices.
The market believes that Apple and Tesla once dominated the market with unique innovation, but as other competitors catch up, the innovation competitiveness of these two world's most important technology and hardware companies is significantly decreasing, becoming closer to "traditional" large companies. Without price competitiveness, it may further affect their performance and market performance. Apple and Tesla are the only two companies among the seven giants in the US stock market whose stock prices have fallen in the latest wave of artificial intelligence.