It finally happened! The day we all knew would come, thanks to nearly ten years of hard work and dedication by some of the absolute best people in the business. I’m talking about Apple finally giving up their program to build an electric (and possibly automated) car, which has been in progress since before 2015 and included nearly 2,000 employees. Like most of us, I had forgotten Apple was still doing this, but, more importantly, now that the project is finally at a close, we can make note of something truly remarkable that you, yes you, sexy reader, should be very proud of: you, with resources a mere fraction of what Apple brings to the table, with none of the money or expertise or time or anything, you have gone head-to-head with Apple and have arrived, after a full decade of effort has passed, at the same point: neither you nor Apple will be mass-producing an electric car. Think about that! You achieved the exact same result in the competitive electric car space as one of the biggest, most powerful companies in the world!
Apple has been extremely careful about not letting pretty much anything about their project, known as Project Titan internally, get out, so we really don’t have much of an idea about what they’ve been doing. I do remember that very early on in the project, around early 2016, they bought one car for the project, and the car they chose was one that actually gave me hope for what they were trying to achieve: an original, 1957 Fiat Multipla.
Yes, a Multipla! It was a great choice! Look:
Of course, nothing in the Apple car program ever seemed to reach old-school Fiat Multipla-levels of, well, anything. Except hype, of course. Oh, was there hype, and some of it was deeply stupid and even somewhat deceptive hype! Remember back in 2016 when Motor Trend pretended to have some major scoop about the Apple car, but in reality just had their own silly made-up renderings and some really long and boring videos about this fake car they’d made up and said was the Apple car? MT published the whole thing again back in 2020, because Reuters was saying that the Apple car would go into production this year, 2024! That was a Reuters exclusive, too, that thing that’s not happening!
Want to see a half-hour video of people (some very respected people, even!) talking about MotorTrend’s fake Apple car? For a half-hour? No, you probably don’t, but since I’m razzing our MT pals so much here, I should at least embed this video and kick them a few clicks, why not?
It’s the decent thing to do, after all.
And, of course, I’m no saint here, either; in 2015 I wrote a big speculative thing about what I thought the Apple car could be, which was a cargo-only automated delivery/pickup robot kind of thing:
It wasn’t that, either, because it’s nothing at all. Remember? The exact same thing that, again, you are personally doing! Not building an electric car! You and Apple, together, both achieving the same thing!
In so many ways, it’s incredible just how much attention and hype the Apple car got for years, despite nobody having any really clear idea what the car would be, what innovations it might bring to the table, or anything. Everyone was just basing this on the fact that Apple is a company renowned for its industrial design that makes consumer electronics products that are used and beloved all over the world. Apple’s product teams are considered some of the best user experience designers and developers in the world. So people thought that had to translate well to cars, even though the company had precisely zero experience making cars. The closest Apple ever came to making a car is likely that time they would sell you wheels for your Mac Pro:
Those wheels are seven hundred dollars. What? I can buy a 2005 Chrysler PT Cruiser for $700 and drive the damn computer around. $700 for some shopping cart casters, and we want these people to build a whole car? Fuck that.
Here’s the thing about Apple ending their Apple car program: it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because it never existed. To Apple’s credit, the people behind the brand themselves never overhyped anything, they never teased products that wouldn’t ever be realized, they never made claims about technology they didn’t have or released any half-baked automated vehicles onto public roads like several companies I could mention. They were just working on stuff, in secret, minding their own business.
There were clues about what was going on, of course. They hired Tesla’s Autopilot software guy, and the CEO of EV cabover truck makers, Canoo.
Really, though, all the overhyping nothing blame is ours. It was all of us journalists who got all excited and hyped up this non-existent Apple car because we all knew stories about the Apple car would get people to click. It’d be fun to say the Apple car was a huge, ridiculous boondoggle but the truth is I have no idea what the Apple car was. There’s been plenty of speculation about radical new battery tech and advanced autonomy features, but nothing official. I’d love to know more. In fact, if there are any Apple engineers or designers who want to let us know something about the project, let’s talk! I’m curious as hell as to what all those people were doing for all those years! And are they selling the Multipla?
For now, most of the Project Titan employees are being re-tasked to generative AI projects. If they had anyone actually working on physical, mechanical car systems, I’d expect those jobs would be the ones most likely to be laid off, since I bet a generative AI system doesn’t need a good steering rack or heat pump.
So, goodbye Apple car project. Since the project produced precisely nothing anyone outside of the company ever knew about, I think we won’t be sitting shiva for too long here. It’s like mourning a dog you had for ten years but never saw, touched, interacted with, or did anything with in any way, other than watching a half-hour video PetTrend made about what they thought your dog was probably like.
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I still haven’t finished not developing an autonomous vehicle. Apple beats me again!
How dare you! My failure to develop an EV was much, much more cost effective than Apple’s.
It was as real as the Multipla’s front crumple zone.
Well. I guess it’s confirmed that Jason never believed in me or my Lectric Car.
I know what I’ll be talking about in therapy this week.
The problem wasn’t going to be the car itself. It didn’t work with the existing car-compatible road system and Apple just couldn’t figure out how to sell you the proprietary road system that you needed to use it on.
I appreciate you trying to put a positive spin on my failure to bring an electric car to market, but I just can’t get over it that easily.
As long as you failed spectacularly, you can be proud. Besides with the experience and reputation you gained, think about how easy it will be for you to raise money the next time you want to buy another island or something.
I’ve pivoted to inventing a new AI that can control the robot army of the future, I’m calling it Skynet!
>I can buy a 2005 Chrysler PT Cruiser for $700
Can you tho?
“$700 for some shopping cart casters”
I can get the whole shopping cart for a quarter at Aldi
And when you’re through with it you can get your quarter back!
You can return it and get your quarter back? Jesus… why do I have this whole warehouse filled with 25 cent shopping carts, then???
Jesus… why do I have this whole warehouse filled with 25 cent shopping carts, then???
You were supposed to collect underpants!
Double your money by selling them back to Aldi for 50 cents!
I tired to get into that racket but all of the carts around here get all stubborn and lie down like a pissed off camel as soon as you get to the edge of the store parking lot. I ended up having to store my stash in the parking lot. Eventually I just decided to let people use them since they were just sitting around doing nothing for me.
> Those wheels are seven hundred dollars. What? I can buy a 2005 Chrysler PT Cruiser for $700 and drive the damn computer around.
Why did I laugh so hard at this
Yeah, I laughed pretty hard at that whole paragraph. Thanks Jason!
Yeah, speaking of overhyping nothing…
I can’t wait for “AI”-apalooza to die its natural death in the hype cycle to rest in the stupidly oversold graveyard next to crypto.
At least everyone stopped pretending to know what “blockchain” means.
While NFTs were the absolute nadir of overhyped tech garbage, I’d qualify blockchain in the middle of AI and NFTs. Really, it’s just a public ledger of transactions. I’m not sure how that’s really going to change the world (still waiting) but it at least has some use, unlike NFTs. I mean, tech bros LOVE talking about blockchain and some seem to be able to extract money from speculation of the values. Seems a lot like going to vegas.
AI, however, is going NOWHERE. We’re just watching it’s birth and it ain’t pretty. The process of machines taking over animal tasks is cyclical. First we got rid of the horses and oxen to do farmwork, replaced with machines. Then we got rid of the people required to do factory work, replaced with machines. Next, we’ll be getting rid of people doing knowledge work and replace them with machines. It’ll take a while, but it is absolutely happening. I have no idea what happens after that, but since I”m a “knowledge worker” I’m not looking forward to it. I somehow doubt we’ll enter a period of utopia where everyone has a universal income and doesn’t have to work. That would be a nightmare for an entitled rich person who believes they had to work hard for their billions and not just inherit successful investments from daddy.
When the ultra wealthy can smell a way to make even more money, they will pour near endless amounts of resources into it. Any time a corporation wants to boost stock price or hoard more cash, they cut employees. It’s been made clear that the dirty meaty people that do the actual work are seen as the biggest drain on the ability to make even more money.
Every so often I like to watch the Cryptoland video just to make me forget that I was actually in the process of spending $20 on Bitcoin back in 2006 or so. It got too complicated and I abandoned the effort after about half an hour. I would have been one of the select few who actually earned money on Bitcoin.
I spent £70 on 1 bitcoin back in the day, which pretty much paid for all my computer upgrades for the next few years. It wasn’t savvy investing, I was intending to buy drugs, got distracted, and forgot about it. Periodically I’d spend half of what was left on a new graphics card or something.
While a block chain is a clever idea, it’s only real use is in a system where there’s no central authority, because it doesn’t require participants to trust each other. 99% of the uses proposed for blockchains, would be solved much more elegantly with a simple database.
While I think you’re right that they’re going to try to replace knowledge workers, keep in mind that AI cannot generate content from nothing. It requires massive amounts of data generated by humans in order to function. For example, you can’t fire all of the writers and let AI do all of humanity’s writing from now until the apocalypse. All it would do is regurgitate the same things it learned from scraping the 2021-era internet. And then you’d get into a weird feedback loop where AI was training AI and just like human echo chambers it would become increasingly stupid until it can longer function at all. Just look at the state of politics in the social media era. 🙂
I could, of course, be wrong and this all completely replaces human content creation, but from what I know about it I don’t think it can or will. There will be some painful impacts on society and I’m not at all sure they’ll be worth the positive side of AI (again, see social media for a previous example), but the impact won’t be what AI proponents are claiming. AI is still climbing the hype cycle and it will be a shocking slide into the trough of disillusionment when it comes.
You are totally not wrong. I don’t think anyone will care that it goes into a feedback loop and generates garbage. Have you ever browsed youtube by popularity/number of views? It’s depressing.
Here is some fun: observe teenagers watching youtube shorts or tiktok. They will just swipe for HOURS with a flat look and glazed over eyes. My kids are not allowed, but their friends are and I watch them just going endlessly. I am told that many of them will be up until 2 or 3 in the morning, just swiping away endlessly.
Nobody will even notice when the AI takes over.
That’s true, I will not shed any tears if AI replaces all TikTok influencers, in part because every time I make the mistake of watching any of that short-form video content I am reminded that “content” should be in quotes because it’s almost all lacking any. I have much the same problem with short-form text platforms like Twitter. The most valuable things there are either links to longer form content or threads that basically work around the asinine limitations of the platform.
And the more I learn about how machine learning is driving the algorithms behind these sites (which is something AI has already quietly taken over) the more I’m convinced it’s all evil. There is a lot of research behind that glazed look on people’s faces when they use these sites. It’s not an accident, it’s the whole point.
AI will soon be superseded by the rush to become immortal super humans. Believe me, it’s coming. The Tech Bros know.
See, at least that one has a tangible use beyond “regurgitate a lot of articles/photos/artwork that was used to train a large computing model without the writer’s or artist’s consent, spit out noticeably wrong facts and/or twelve-fingered humanoid creatures, and push journalists and artists out of work anyway.”
PASS THE VIRGIN YOUNG PERSON BLOOD. I SAW GREY HAIRS.
Apple and I are now competitors in not building an electric car. I hope they don’t bankrupt me in order to drive me out of this market!
Jokes on them, I’m already broke!
Poison pill strategy against takeover (happens to be a bad cabbage salad) 🙂
Oh boy, people in Italy really were tiny in 1957…
I had one and am not tiny. It’s surprisingly spacious.
I bet it is. But look at that 12″ wheel compared to head sizes 😉
Well, if there’s anyone being laid off, I understand Elio, Olympian, and Alpha are all hiring
Now now, Elon Musk could be reading this…
Thank god, I hope they assign every single engineer to crank out (non-car) development framework documentation and sample code, which has been terrible for years. And they act like they’re ashamed to have any sample code, the way they make it hard to find.
Bravo Jason on your choice of Richard Scarry’s worm in the apple car in your illustration.
Came here for this… leaving satisfied… Lowly Worm is the best
One of my most prized possessions is a small Mr. Frumble’s Pickle Car toy complete with the namesake at the wheel. A cherished family heirloom. Not kidding.
Oh no! /s What does this mean for my Apple shares? /s
Kristen’s gonna wanna kick your ass!
OH NO! anyway…..
Musk 1, Cook 0.
As an Apple product, it’s almost guaranteed that there would’ve been way too much Chinese content to make it into the country – at least until lobbyists get the laws changed. So, about a month.
Thank you Jason! You have made me feel better about myself today! I was getting down on myself for just sitting on the couch all day, but now I can claim I have done as much as Apple!
So Toecutter is now way ahead of Apple in EV development (and likely always was).
Well, yes. He has at least one EV in assembly, and working on a prototype hybrid(human/electric). Well if I remember right.
Torch, too – his battery work in the Changli must surely count for something.
Maybe Apple needed more seed money. They just frittered away the fruits of their labor, while never getting to the core.
agree, this project just ended up going pear shaped… If they could only crank up the sauce. As an outcider, I wonder if this left a vinegar taste in the mouths of the board
They didn’t have enough STEM grads on the project.
Why would Apple, a company that outsources its manufacturing and makes a nice fat juicy margin on phones and services, want to get into a capital intensive, manufacturing based industry in which it has no experience, for margins of 10%? From the beginning it never made any sense to anyone with half a brain.
Agreed. As a shareholder, I am glad this waste of money is over. I’m sure they gained something out of it (perhaps for CarPlay) but I doubt it was worth the money. It just never made any sense at all. And I say this as someone who has just about every product they’ve ever made in the last 20 years.
I assumed that they were just working on self-driving software to license out. Or if a car actually existed they’d just outsource the manufacturing to Magna Steyr or something.
I can see why on the surface that makes sense, but it totally goes against Apple’s MO, which is their software on their own products. There’s too many hardware variables for them to be comfortable licensing out something like that.
Call me cynical all you want (deserved) but under Tim Cook the MO has been to hype various products either overtly or secretly for the precise purpose of increasing the stock price to make him and board members all the money that there has ever been.
I still think Apple likes all the rumor and speculation because it builds a hype and mystique they really could not buy if they tried.
Full disclosure: sent from my iPhone 13 mini.
Apple doesn’t license any software out.
Do they not license CarPlay? I imagine their self-driving modules would be integrated in a similar way.
There are two ways to look at it. The first being that they know it is a loss-leader (tax wise) and can use the whole shebang to offset profit in other areas, in the same way those dumbass goggles are.
The second one is to look at it as an aspirational product that has a guaranteed market consumption rate, so it’s a win-win scenario. It’s easy revenue and easy publicity to keep their name relevant in the market, even if it sucked.
Everyone knows that the phone market is saturated and there really isn’t much left to capitalize in physical hardware there, so the obvious choice is to brand, brand, brand…
Except that no one is interested in buying a car from a company where their users are more than happy to plant their flag on the hill of “what color is your text bubble?.”
So, at the end of the day, they got to write off a bunch of expenses to “explore the idea” and spread it out over a decade, didn’t lose an actual dime in the bottom line, employed some folks that can probably be cross-transferred to other projects, and were able to foster some fomation that the car was gonna be the world-beater that they promised.
Creative accounting, really. They never wanted the aftermath of all having a car entails. Having to service cars is so much more of a headache (both in liability and actual day-today-grime) that any of it is worth.
It was a Three Card Monty. We’ve seen it before and will see it again.
Based on nothing I’m inclined to blame it on Eddy Cue, who seems to have a lot of power and influence but whose areas of responsibility are mostly terrible.
Maybe it was some sort of pump and dump scheme:
The problem I have is that I just can’t see the motive for all this, but that hasn’t stopped a good conspiracy theory before.
How dare you suggest that I won’t ever mass produce an electric vehicle!
Regards,
Paul Elio
This is the detailed, nuanced, hard-hitting journalism I frequent this site for. Keep it coming!
yup, if there’s an ignobel prize equivalent to the pulitzer prize like there is to the nobel prize, this is definitely one of the top contenders of the year.
Genius! We’ll call it the Putzlers!