Apple plans to shut down autonomous electric car project: Report

American technology giant Apple is reportedly planning to shut down its multi-billion dollar autonomous electric car project.
Bloomberg, citing sources inside the technology giant, reported that many of the staff involved in developing the vehicle are now being moved to work on the company’s generative artificial intelligence projects.
It is not yet clear how many staff will be laid off as Apple also had several hundred hardware engineers and vehicle designers working on the project.
Apple did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment.

Company chief Tim Cook hinted in 2017 that Apple was working on ‘autonomous systems’, which he called the ‘mother of all AI projects’.

The technology company had been secretly developing a self-driving electric car project for several years before that.
The exact nature of Apple’s rumored car design has changed over the years, with the company either developing a fully autonomous vehicle or just the technology used in it.

The car could feature Siri integration, a customizable convertible driver dashboard, and ‘adaptive doors’, according to documents from the iPhone maker.
While the legal documents submitted aren’t a guarantee that the feature was added, the details suggest that Apple may be looking to replace the traditional car dashboard entirely.
The company was reportedly trying to use ‘next-level’ battery technology in its car project.
Reuters reported in 2020, citing people close to the matter, that Apple was planning to use a new battery design “primarily” to cut costs and increase the vehicle’s range.
Mr. Cook also kept the project secret for several years, at one point saying that parts of the project could only be experimental tests within the company.

“We investigate a lot of things internally,” he said in a 2021 interview. Many of them cannot be implemented, I am not saying that none of them will be implemented.’

Tesla chief Elon Musk appeared to celebrate Apple’s decision to end the project, sharing a post of the news with a silhouette and a cigarette emoji.