Apple Pulls The Plug On Project Titan, Its Electric Vehicle Project

Apple’s electric car project, codenamed Project Titan, has been called off. While there is no word from the tech giant itself, reliable sources suggest that the decade-long project has been scrapped for unknown reasons. As per previous reports in 2020, the project was supposed to birth a ‘self-driving’ car by 2024, but clearly, there is nothing like that coming from the iPhone maker. So what exactly happened?

The people working on the project Titan were recently communicated that the project will soon be shut down and that they will be transferred to Apple’s generative AI project. While the scrapping of the EV project might come as a surprise to some, it does make sense for the brand to back out of such a highly intense and competitive space. The latter, i.e. focusing on generative AI, is anything but a surprise considering the brand’s innate industry. More about it later in the story.

Project Titan Deets

It was in 2014 that Apple reportedly set its sights on the automotive industry. The plan was to come up with a fully autonomous (level-4) vehicle – one without steering wheel and pedals. That ambitious vision was soon toned down to Level 2+ driver assistance, but even still, the launch timeline was set for around 2024 to 2025.

The reason for Apple binning the project could be down to the fact that the demand for EVs isn’t really growing at the same pace as the influx of new carmakers. This is just a speculation and there could be various other parameters behind this decision as well, but that’s something that only Apple knows.

What now?

But focusing on generative AI does make a lot of sense for a tech giant like Apple. ChatGPT already disrupted the entire world with its capabilities and generative AI will be an extension of the same tech. Imagine generating text, images, audios or even videos with minimal input from the end user. That’s what Apple is after.

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While this might be the end for Apple’s fully autonomous EV attempt at the moment, it still isn’t a complete wrap up. Given how ambitious the brand is, a revival can never be ruled out. That revival seems even more possible when you consider that other tech giants like Sony and Xiaomi are also developing and have developed their own EVs, albeit not fully autonomous. Maybe Apple should’ve partnered with Elon and Tesla back in the Model 3 days. Who knows they still might in the near future!