Mark Gurman, with some big news:
Apple Inc. is canceling a decade-long effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.
Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.
Personally, I’m a little relieved that Apple isn’t going to be shipping a car. It always seemed too far-fetched for me to imagine, and I don’t think any part of Apple was ready for what servicing cars is like in the real world.
Gurman goes on to report that many of those 2,000 folks will report to John Giannandrea and work on Apple’s generative AI efforts, and I’d imagine some others will be let go once the project is wound down. Hopefully that latter number is small. I am sure a bunch of the work done to build a self-driving car has already paid dividends when it comes to the Vision Pro and whatever iOS 18 will bring.