Apple's work on Project Titan cost $10 billion over ten years years decade
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The report says that “many” Apple employees considered Project Titan an inevitable failure and are glad it is dying in favor of work on artificial intelligence.
The ten-year Project Titan follows a long and winds its way past Jony Ive's self-driving car hopes, secret race tracks and an offer to buy Tesla. The Apple Car project is canceled for now, but that doesn't mean Apple won't reap the rewards of its hard work.
According to the report The New York Times: At least some Apple employees are excited about the end of Project Titan. The project's failure seemed likely, and it was sometimes called the “Titanic disaster”.
The idea for the Apple Car came about just as Apple was wrapping up work on the Apple Watch. The company wanted to compete with Tesla and potentially capture a chunk of the sizable auto industry.
Google and other Silicon Valley companies have their sights set on electric vehicles, so it seemed natural for Apple to take on the challenge. The details of the report from engineers interviewing Jony Ive and team make it sound as if it was almost certain that a self-driving Apple Car was both possible and inevitable.
Jony Ive was a fan of the Fiat 600 and even sold this custom car at auction in 2013.
After ten years of research, Apple is still no closer to releasing fully self-driving car than Tesla. No one has managed to do this, and there is one problem that modern “AI” algorithms can solve – — other people on the road.
Fortunately, work on autonomous systems and vehicle artificial intelligence is easy to transfer to other aspects of computing. Apple supposedly invested $10 billion into Project Titan, but those funds are not wasted as all that work will now benefit the development of artificial intelligence.
Reallocation of resources
It was reported that Apple's abandonment of the car project was not due to engineering impossibility — the company has already moved to Level 2 autonomy from Level 4. Building an EV at Level 2 is commonplace and entirely possible for Apple.
No, the goal of the project was profitability. Apple will never be able to sell cars at the expected profit margin, especially with the declining EV market and competitors heading to the bottom.
Some members of the Project Titan team may be laid off, but others are being transferred to artificial intelligence projects or asked to apply for other positions within the company. If Apple ever decides to release the Apple Car again in the future, most of the work has already been done.
