Sources detail Apple's $10B+ car project: years of disagreements over building a self-driving car or just an EV, talks with Elon Musk on buying Tesla, and more

Internal disagreements over the direction of the Apple car led the effort to sputter for years before it was canceled this week.

New York Times 2024-02-29

Context & Ripple Effects

Apple's cancellation caps a long-running pattern of scaling the car effort back toward autonomous-driving testing and later reports of an EV program pursuing a much broader vehicle ambition. Accounts from former project staff had already described shifting goals and frequent leadership changes, making the final outcome more than a single-project reversal.

The reported Tesla acquisition discussions and repeated partnership exploration, also detailed in a subsequent account of the project’s failed options, underline how Apple struggled to settle on a build-versus-partner route as well as a product definition.

First-order effects

Apple ends a car initiative reported to have consumed more than $10 billion, closing a years-long effort divided between a self-driving vehicle and a conventional EV.
The reported Tesla talks produced no deal; Tesla remains independent, while Apple loses a potential direct route into the vehicle market.

Second-order effects

Apple can redirect the people and capital tied to the canceled program, but it also gives up an in-house path to turn its autonomous-driving and vehicle work into a finished car.
The failure reinforces the execution risk for companies weighing full vehicle development against partnerships: neither an EV nor autonomous-driving strategy is viable without a stable product mandate.

Third-order effects

If similar projects keep confronting the same choice, technology companies may favor supplying software or components over owning the capital-intensive responsibility of building and launching vehicles.
The episode points to a durable constraint on autonomy ambitions: technical development, product scope, and organizational ownership must converge before a large R&D program can become a commercial vehicle.

The trend: Apple's exit is one data point in a broader sorting of automotive ambitions toward strategies with clearer product scope and lower exposure to full-vehicle execution risk.

Discussion

@appleinsider @appleinsider on x
According to a report from The New York Times, #Apple employees referred to the Apple Car “Project Titan” as “the Titanic disaster”, and are glad the project has been ended to focus on #AI efforts. [image]
@snazzylabs @snazzylabs on x
@iconredesign That's my whole point. People think the Vision Pro was released because they spent too much money on it behind the scenes to cancel its release. That was a stupid thought and this proves it.
@snazzylabs @snazzylabs on x
Apple spending more than a decade and hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars on Project Titan (the car) only to cancel it, cutting their losses, without saying a word publicly goes to show how very much the opposite they think of Vision Pro. They believe in it HARD.
@florian4gamers Florian Mueller on x
Will Apple at some point also pull the plug on its baseband processor project? They've repeatedly postponed using their own cellular chipsets. They sued Qualcomm in 2017, settled in 2019 because Intel couldn't reliably deliver 5G, then bought that Intel division. Still no result.
r/SelfDrivingCars r on reddit
Behind Apple's Doomed Car Project: False Starts and Wrong Turns
r/apple r on reddit
Behind Apple's Doomed Car Project: False Starts and Wrong Turns

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