Even if Apple had never really officially communicated its desire to manufacture and market an autonomous, voice-controlled electric vehicle, this project secretly called “Titan” had been widely leaked for ten years.
The Apple brand preferred to put an end to it to concentrate on the development of artificial intelligence tools, American media announced.
This program began in 2014. Nearly 2,000 employees were involved in it.
Initially, Apple aimed to produce its own electric vehicle from scratch and without the support of a car manufacturer.
According to the specialized press, the American firm has long pursued two strategies simultaneously.
One by developing a vehicle with reduced autonomous driving capabilities but with new functionalities for braking or acceleration management and another with a completely autonomous vehicle requiring no human intervention.
In 2021, the Copertino company would have chosen the second hypothesis.
According to reports, this car would have had neither pedals nor steering wheel (but still with the possibility of taking control in an emergency) and the passengers would have been able to face each other.
Obviously, the vehicle would have been equipped with the entire Apple environment.
All with a reliable system capable of transporting people safely.
With this car, Apple was targeting not only fleets of autonomous taxis capable of competing with VTCs but also individuals, even if in current opinion surveys, the principle of the autonomous car is far from unanimously supported.
The lack of vehicle control is always scary.
Apple prefers to focus on artificial intelligence
And then, the economic environment could also have had an impact on this decision.
In the United States, as in many Western countries, even if the talk about electric cars is omnipresent, the reality is less dapper.
Several American automakers have eased off on electric vehicles in recent months because demand is not growing as quickly as expected.
According to some studies, buyers who believe in electric have already taken the plunge.
On the other hand, for others, for multiple reasons (autonomy, cost, etc.) this transition is much more difficult.
2025 could even mark the end of strong growth in this market before it stabilizes.
Furthermore, an election of Donald Trump could also put a serious brake on this development.
Likewise, the development of self-driving cars is much slower and more complicated than projections.
Just look at the difficulties Waymo (Google) encountered in expanding its services to San Francisco.
This decision constitutes a “real bomb for the company”, comments Bloomberg, because the project represented “several billion dollars” and “would have propelled it into a whole new sector of activity.
However, for analysts, this halt when this project could have turned into a financial flop, will allow Apple by transferring part of its employees who worked on the Apple car to concentrate on acceleration and development. execution of a vast generative artificial intelligence strategy allowing, like Chat GPT, to produce texts, images or to be invited into many sectors of activity in the future, starting with smartphones.
Tim Cook promised during the presentation of the financial results for the first quarter of 2024 announcements this year.