Project Titan was the code name for Apple’s secret effort to build a self-driving electric car. The project reportedly started in 2014, and went through many changes during a decade of clandestine development.
During that time, Apple filed for many automotive patents, poached key executives from automakers, and struggled with Project Titan’s direction.
Apple pulled the plug on the long-rumored Apple car project on February 27, 2024. The company reportedly plans to lay off some workers and reassign many to work on its generative AI efforts.
Teams in Cupertino are working on Apple personal home robotic devices, including a mobile robot and a table-top device with a moving display, according to a new report.
These early efforts toward Apple robots could constitute future revenue sources now that the Project Titan car sits on the scrap heap.
A smartphone giant just came out with its first car. No, Apple hasn’t about-faced on its plans to scrap its decade-long Project Titan car program. Instead, Chinese tech behemoth Xiaomi unveiled a sporty electric vehicle Thursday it hopes will rival those made by Porsche and Tesla. It’s the Xiaomi SU7 EV series.
The history of the Apple car is littered with wild prototypes, astonishing hubris and a deadly dose of crippling indecision, according to a damning report that offers the best picture yet of the secretive Project Titan.
It sounds like many Apple employees — and even key execs — viewed the self-driving car project as a doomed effort nearly from the start.
“The big arc was poor leadership that let the program linger, while everyone else in Apple was cringing,” said an anonymous Apple executive who worked on Project Titan.
If you want to know how a massive research and development project can crash and burn, this new behind-the-scenes account of Project Titan will show you how. It’s filled with gory details of unachievable goals, chaotic management, bad decisions (and sometimes no decisions at all).
Apple’s reported cancellation of its electric car project strikes me as one of the most demoralizing decisions the company has ever made. And I’m not sure which is worse, the Apple car cancellation, or the revelation of how Cupertino plans to reroute most of Project Titan’s brainpower.
The long-rumored Apple car was never a done deal, obviously. But it stood out as a moonshot project capable of transforming transportation and improving our everyday lives.
Now we find out that Apple won’t be going to the moon. Instead, Cupertino might be taking a me-too detour to Gibberish City.
An Apple employee was recently indicted for allegedly transferring trade secrets about self-driving car technology to a Chinese company. This marks the third such incident.
The cases seem quite similar: Chinese companies hire the workers, who then get caught attempting to bring Apple’s proprietary information with them when they leave the United States.
A former Lamborghini executive recently joined Apple to lead design of the company’s long-rumored self-driving car, according to a new report Wednesday.
As Apple works toward releasing an electric vehicle before the end of this decade, the addition of Luigi Taraborrelli, who worked for the fabled Italian automaker for 20 years, could accelerate the project.
On the heels of Apple VP Doug Field’s departure as chief of the Apple Car project for a role at Ford, Cupertino has named longtime Apple Watch software head Kevin Lynch its new exec in charge of Project Titan. That’s the code name for the company’s self-driving electric car effort.
Development of an Apple car just hit another speed bump. Doug Field, who’d reportedly been managing the project, just left to join the Ford Motor Company.
This is surely a blow to Apple’s secretive automotive efforts. And the company was already multiple years away from having anything to put in a showroom, according to the latest leaks.
Apple apparently wants to build car batteries on its home soil. The company is eyeing a number of manufacturers as it plans to set up factories in the United States, according to a new report.
Foxconn, already one of Apple’s largest manufacturing partners, or Advanced Lithium Electrochemistry (Aleees) could get battery orders from Cupertino in the future, sources say.
Only 23 of Apple’s registered self-driving cars were active between December 2018 and November 2019, according to data provided to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. In total, Apple’s fleet of modified Lexus RX450h SUVs travelled 7,544 miles during the period.
That’s down from the 79,745 miles its vehicles travelled in the previous year.
Apple is working hard on a self-driving car project, but company co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak seemingly isn’t convinced that autonomous vehicles will be ruling the roads anytime soon.
At a recent auto conference, Woz pulled back his predictions about when self-driving cars will take over; saying that there are too many challenges in Level 5 autonomous vehicles.
Apple has slightly increased the number of test drivers for its self-driving car project, although the total number of vehicles remains the same.
According to new figures from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Apple is currently testing 69 cars on public roads in California. That’s the same number it had in late April. However, Apple has increased its test drivers from 110 to 143 since then.
This week on The CultCast: Apple’s working on something BIG, and their massive increase in R&D spending proves it. Plus: we discuss all the surprises Apple unveiled in their recent earnings report, and it was another record breaker. And if you think your conversations with Siri are private, think again! Apple’s been caught reviewing your most personal sound bytes. And a new Moviepass competitor has emerged with a very interesting offer, but is it worth the price? All that and more!
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain..
Another high profile Tesla executive has joined Apple’s team, possibly signaling some significant progress is being made on the development of Apple’s car project.
The question of whether Apple is building a physical Apple Car or just a software platform hasn’t been confirmed either way.
But there are a few hints, such as the fact that Apple was just granted a patent for a special suspension system for a car. Whether that part of the project continues remains to be seen.
Dying to see what Apple’s idea of a car looks like? Here’s a bumper.
OK, so a patent, like the one for an extendable bumper awarded to Apple today, doesn’t exactly give us a detailed picture. But we at least see one more piece of evidence Apple remains a committed player in the future of cars – whether we drive them or not.
Self-driving car startup Drive.ai is reportedly shutting down — and Apple is scooping up the talent.
Drive.ai, which made kits that turn regular cars into self-driving cars, notified the Employment Development Department of California that it was shutting down and laying off all 90 of its employees. Apple was reportedly looking into acquiring the company earlier this month. Instead, Cupertino decided to just hire some of its key employees.
As part of its Project Titan initiative, Apple has invented some smart tech for improving detection of road signs and other vehicles on the road in low visibility situations.
This could ramp up safety in situations such as an autonomous Apple Car driving in foggy, snowy, low light or otherwise hard-to-see situations.
Apple’s fleet of self-driving cars has gotten smaller for the first time since the project’s inception.
In a recent filing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Apple revealed that both its number of cars and drivers permitted to test them have decreased since that company’s last report at the end of 2018.
Apple is reportedly in talks with Lidar makers regarding sensors that could be used for its Apple Car initiative.
A commonly used surveying tool, Lidar measures distances between objects. It works by firing a pulsed laser light, then measuring how long it takes to bounce back. While not exclusively used in self-driving cars, that’s the application the technology is most synonymous with.
Apple’s self-driving car project may be nearing the end of the road.
After rumors surfaced last month that the company slashed its workforce for Project Titan, Apple confirmed today that 190 employees in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale have been released from the self-driving car project.
Apple’s long-rumored self-driving car project might not churn out a car at all. Instead, it might just be an electric minibus.
According to a sketchy new rumor, Apple engineers have supposedly created a new minibus, which should be able to drive autonomously, if it ever hits the road.
The iPhone could transform into a secure version of a key fob that not only unlocks your vehicle, but it could also summon a parked vehicle to come to you.
Apple drops a breadcrumb on the path to an autonomous vehicle future, offering a possible glimpse into its Project Titan with a patent application for a keyless entry system.
Another alleged Chinese spy has been caught apparently trying to steal secrets from Apple’s mysterious self-driving car project.
The FBI reportedly arrested a Chinese national working for Apple the day before he planned to fly back to China with thousands of files on his laptop, including Apple’s intellectual property. He was reportedly planning to take all the info to a Chinese electric car manufacturer.