The technology giant Apple canceled its ambitious and expensive project to launch an electric vehicle, according to what the company leaked to its workers in a communication to which Bloomberg had access.
The apple company, which has been working on the automobile for a decade, announced the measure internally this Tuesday.
Apple COO Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, vice president in charge of the project, were in charge of announcing the measure to the team’s 2,000 employees.
Some of the staff behind the creation of the car will go to work for the team in charge of generative artificial intelligence (AI) – an increasingly key priority for the company – and another part, whose number is unknown, will be laid off, according to Bloomberg.
The technology giant began working on a car around 2014, with the idea of creating a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a limousine-like interior and voice-guided navigation, according to the specialized press.
The car was codenamed ‘Project Titan’ and the price of the vehicle would have been around $100,000.
Musk celebrates the measure
The CEO of the electric car company Tesla, Elon Musk, celebrated the announcement on his social network X, with the military salute emoji.
But just because Apple has abandoned the autonomous electric vehicle race doesn’t mean Tesla won’t face new competition.
Sony and Honda said they will launch their pre-orders for Afeela electric cars with autonomous features in North America next year, ahead of a 2026 launch.
Apple bets on AI
This month, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that Apple will launch generative AI features “later this year.”
It’s no surprise that Apple is looking to focus its energy on AI, as last summer Bloomberg noted that the apple company is spending millions of dollars a day training its own AI model, called Ajax.
The company spent $113 billion on total research and development over the past five years. Apple’s latest launch was the Vision Pro virtual reality glasses, its new product in almost a decade, which costs $3,499.
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