In an article, the New York Times recounts the agony of the Titan project, abandoned by Apple after 10 years and 10 billion dollars spent. The Apple Car, which will not see the light of day, has never been a stable project.
Did you know that the iPhone could have been an iPod capable of making calls, with a round dial? In the months leading up to the presentation of the smartphone that would change the world, Apple asked itself a lot of questions. Two visions were opposed, before Steve Jobs decided to decide in favor of the “P2” project, which was an all-touch device.
About fifteen years later, the Apple Car experienced the same thing. Since 2014, Apple has been working on the Titan project, which dreams of revolutionizing the automobile with a high-end and autonomous model, in line with what Tesla is doing. A project abandoned at the start of 2024, as Bloomberg revealed on February 27. We now know a little more about the two projects that went to war, to the point of encouraging Apple to give up on them altogether.
An autonomous Fiat 600 Multipla versus a self-driving Tesla Model S
According to New York Times, which investigated Project Titan and published a paper on February 28, several members of the founding team preferred to call it Project Titanic. The fault lies with a perpetually “rebooted” project, which initially imagined doing Tesla (Apple even considered buying Elon Musk’s company several times). The brand ultimately pivoted towards a 100% autonomous vehicle project, before returning to its initial ambitions, namely a personal high-end car.
In 2014, when Project Titan began, Apple’s goal was to prevent an exodus of its employees at Tesla, as electric cars became fashionable and the Apple Watch project had just concluded. Two projects then clashed:
- Steve Zadesky, the director of the Titan project, wanted to create a high-end electric car to compete with the Tesla Model S.
- Jonathan Ive, the iconic Apple designer, wanted a 100% autonomous car, without pedals and without a steering wheel, which could be controlled by voice. He won.
To achieve its objective, Apple has poached several thousand employees from large automobile manufacturers or NASA. The brand would have considered designing an augmented reality windshield, with a screen to display directions in GTA, as well as a new generation glass roof, immune to heat.
Pushed by Jony Ive, the Titan project gradually moved away from the Model S to become a mini-van, with the Fiat 600 Multipla (not the horrible, often mocked Multipla) as inspiration. Siri should have been in charge.
Four changes in management and ten billion dollars in expenses later, after repeated failures to find a partner, Apple abandoned its autonomous vehicle project. The Titan team’s latest effort was a return to the original project, with the goal of launching a high-end car, around $100,000, to rival Tesla.
On February 27, 2024, after concluding at the start of the year that this project would probably never be profitable, Apple announced to the 2,000 employees of the Titan project that it no longer intended to market a car.
AI will recover Project Titan creations
According to Bloomberg, the majority of Titan teams will join the teams in charge of generative artificial intelligence at Apple. THE New York Times thinks he knows why: the Apple Car was packed with generative AI even before the advent of ChatGPT. The demonstrations imagined by Apple showed a Siri capable of answering the question “did I walk past this store?” », in order to have real discussions with his passenger. Most of Project Titan’s investments were in artificial intelligence, suggesting that this $10 billion was not wasted.
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