The information was disclosed internally by Apple, Bloomberg wrote, citing familiar sources. The tech firm declined to comment on the termination of the ambitious project.
Around 2,000 people worked on the development of the electric car. They were surprised to learn that the project would be phased out and that some of them would move to the AI division. Several hundred hardware engineers and car designers work in the team. It is possible that they will be able to apply for jobs in other departments of the company. There will also apparently be layoffs, but it's unclear at what rate, Bloomberg reports.
The company has poured billions of dollars into a project that would propel it into a new industry. The original goal was to create a fully autonomous electric car with a limousine-like interior and voice-controlled navigation. However, the project ran into problems almost from the start, and Apple changed the team's leadership and strategy several times.
Bloomberg wrote a month ago that the project had reached a critical point. The last approach discussed internally was to delay the vehicle's launch until 2028 and reduce the vehicle's level of autonomy from level four to level two-plus. There are six levels of autonomous vehicles, from zero to five. The most advanced is the fully autonomous vehicle.