Apple allegedly cancels car project

[Cmaier]

Apple to Wind Down Electric Car Effort After Decadelong Odyssey

Apple Inc. is canceling a decadelong effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.

www.bloomberg.com

I am not a subscriber so I can’t read the article, but here ya go.
Here’s another link that doesn’t say much: https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/27/apple-cancels-apple-car-project-moves-team-to-generative-ai-projects/

 

[rdrr]

Apple to Wind Down Electric Car Effort After Decadelong Odyssey

Apple Inc. is canceling a decadelong effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.

www.bloomberg.com

I am not a subscriber so I can’t read the article, but here ya go.

Not a subscriber as well, but with the current hype cycle on AI. The shift makes sense.

 

[Cmaier]

Not a subscriber as well, but with the current hype cycle on AI. The shift makes sense.

A lot of those car folks probably were not software folks, and I assume they are moving on.

I think they must have decided that self-driving is nowhere close to happening, that the new carplay features rolling out that further integrate CarPlay into car systems will bring a lot of the features apple’s car would have added anyway, and they got tired of dumping money into it.

It’s a shame - I would have loved a car with applecare+

 

[dada_dave]

Probably for the best if so - it did seem to be stuck in development hell.

Not a subscriber as well, but with the current hype cycle on AI. The shift makes sense.

TBH AI was an integral part of this project, but I think there’s been a general admission that FSD is further away than originally thought no matter how many times Musk promises it’s just around the corner.

 

[Cmaier]

Some more reporting.

Apple’s electric car project is dead

Switching from EVs to AI?

www.theverge.com

 

[rdrr]

Probably for the best if so - it did seem to be stuck in development hell.



TBH AI was an integral part of this project, but I think there’s been a general admission that FSD is further away than originally thought no matter how many times Musk promises it’s just around the corner.

That is probably why FSD is not as far along as it should be. AI is still on the upward trend of the hype cycle, and until it goes through a few more iterations I wouldn't trust it.

Not being tinfoil hat paranoid, more of a skeptic on AI. AI is like a toddler with superpowers.

 

[Cmaier]

A little more information.

After a decade of stops and starts, Apple kills its electric car project

Report claims Apple leadership worried profit margins simply wouldn't be there.

arstechnica.com

 

[Roller]

I'm surprised Apple took so long - and wasted so much money - before killing it off. I never thought it was a great fit for the company. Maybe the sunk costs fallacy kept it going. I'm also surprised none of the headlines say "Apple slams the brakes on electric car project."

 

[Nycturne]

Not to mention you need a bunch of capabilities working in tandem. Some of it you can maybe bridge using fixed algorithms, but FSD is one of those things where you can make a good demo loooong before it can handle all the edge cases.

AI is like a toddler with superpowers.

A toddler that can produce college-level essays on topics, but not necessarily be able to reason about the essay it just produced.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Going to go off on a mini tangent here. I blame this whole little side venture on shareholder centric hyper capitalism. Growth! Growth! GROWTH!! Milking more growth out of your current product line declining? Get cracking on something else, NOW! Consistent or even slight momentary decline in sales is not GROWTH!!!

 

[ArgoDuck]

I had speculated their car project was to be something out of left-field, an AR-type hybrid of human and AI rather than FSD. Their announcement of Vision Pro last year made that hybridization seem a fraction more likely to me.

As i say, pure speculation. Now we’ll never know, probably. Disappointing if it was ‘just another FSD car project’!

And so now we’re to have ‘just another GPT/LLM’ instead?