The Apple car team disbanded, and the 8-year car-making dream was shattered again

Legal Counsel: Mr. Zhao Jianying

Recently, "Apple Breaking News King" Guo Mingxi has broken the news again, saying that the Apple Car project team "has long been disbanded".

Apple Cars, cold again?

Recently, the famous analyst Guo Mingji broke the news on his personal Twitter post again, saying that Apple's long-rumored staff team in charge of Apple's Car project has been "disbanded for some time."

To complete apple's goal of mass-producing the car by 2025, it will have to restructure its team in the next three to six months.

Long since disbanded?

As a well-known "Apple Breaking News King" in the industry, Guo Mingji has many words. That is to say, without the big move of the team, Apple cannot complete the mass production of Apple Car in the long-publicized 2025 deadline, and the project will either jump tickets or fail.

Of course, the best scenario is that the Apple Car's design plan and production plan have been finalized, and not too many people are required to continue to do redundant work. But in this case, at least the team needs to retain a basic backbone to follow up the production process later.

At such a critical point in time, the news of the team's total cut makes people wonder whether the project has been completely abandoned.

Apple car hypothetical diagram

Some netizens expressed pessimism: "Thinking that this is the news that this is the nth time I have seen the dissolution of the Apple Car team, I really doubt that the Apple Car will come out in the end."

Apple's 8-year dream of building a car

Back in 2014, Apple launched Project Titan, where more than 1,000 automotive experts and engineers develop electric cars at a secret location near the company's Cupertino headquarters.

This "Titan project" can be described as ambitious, and it is said that the car to be built not only has no steering wheel, but also does not have a gas pedal, and can be driven without user intervention.

As the "next star product", Apple Car can not only provide "better hardware, software and service integration", but also "significantly better than ordinary electric vehicles", positioning "very high-end".

With the success of Apple's chips, the possibility of using self-developed high-performance processors on self-driving cars has also increased. The "most advanced component Apple has developed to date" will be responsible for handling the incredible AI operating load required for self-driving cars. Of course, not surprisingly, it was still foundry by TSMC.

While Apple's technology is top-notch, it is clearly completely inexperienced in car manufacturing. That is, Apple must have a partner in charge of producing the car.

At present, no manufacturer has stepped forward to pick up this "hot potato".

However, due to internal strife and leadership problems, Project Titan has been turned and changed many times, but the good news is that R&D seems to be continuing.

In general, Apple is reluctant to share too many details of its projects. But when it comes to automotive software, black-box silence doesn't seem to work for regulatory reasons.

In June 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke publicly about Apple's progress on self-driving software, confirming the company's projects with a rare candor.

Cook said: "We are focusing on autonomous driving systems. This is a core technology that we consider very important. We see it as the crown of all AI projects. This is probably one of the most difficult ongoing AI projects."

Of course, Cook's remarks may also be due to the discovery at the beginning of the year that Several apple cars loaded with a large number of sensors and cameras were "tested" on public roads in Livonia.

It is speculated that Apple may indeed be developing self-driving software, and testing has increased over time.

However, given Apple's ambitions and actual progress on self-driving cars, even by 2025, it may not be possible.

There are frequent revelations, but no progress has been made

Apple's interest in cars is said to date back to before the original iPhone.

Even Steve Jobs had considered whether to develop one and met with the manufacturer of the light and inexpensive "V-shaped" car in 2010.

However, from the results, Jobs finally chose to focus on the iPhone.

As the iPhone begins to become the most lucrative device, Apple seems to be once again exploring the possibilities of car-related projects.

In February 2015, a mystery van leased to Apple was found driving on the streets of Northern California. The van is fitted with a camera device with multiple cameras.

As a result, speculation began that Apple might be using it to develop a product similar to Google Street View. Of course, the bolder speculation pointed to the possibility of an autonomous vehicle, but the van was quickly determined to have a driver inside.

Apple later said the van was linked to a mapping project, but it was undoubtedly the catalyst that led to the disclosure of Apple Car's secrets.

Just days after the vans were first discovered, an unidentified Apple employee emailed Insider magazine suggesting that Apple was working on a project to "give Tesla a good look."

The source said Tesla employees were "jumping ship" to a project at Apple that was "too exciting to miss."

This tantalizing hint has led some media outlets to dig deeper into Apple's plans.

In mid-February 2015, the Financial Times learned that Apple was hiring automotive technology and vehicle design experts to work in a "top-secret research lab."

Reports at the time highlighted Apple's hiring of Johann Jungwirth, a former Mercedes-Benz R&D executive, and pointed to Apple's efforts to research automotive-related products.

The media initially speculated that Apple might be developing an advanced software platform based on CarPlay, because a comprehensive car-making project sounds incredible.

But just a few hours later, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Apple was indeed working to build an electric car, and the project began in 2014.

According to Wall Street Journal sources, Apple has hundreds of employees designing an electric car similar to a minivan, code-named Project Titan.

Steve Zadesky, Apple's vice president of product design, led the project under Dan Riccio and was approved by Apple CEO Tim Cook, recruiting more than 1,000 employees, many of them from within Apple.

In addition, Apple executives have met with custom chambers of high-end cars such as Magna Steyr. Perhaps, if the focus of the car project has not been shifted, Apple is likely to cooperate with them.

Apple's automotive team reportedly explored a wide range of technologies, including silent electric doors, car interiors without steering wheels or accelerator pedals, augmented reality displays, improved lidar sensors (which protrude less on the roof) and spherical wheels.

But because there is no clear vision for developing the car, executives are even divided on major issues such as whether the car should be fully autonomous or semi-autonomous, leading to delays and internal strife.

Due to internal problems, in January 2016, Steve Zadski announced plans to withdraw from the project, leaving a successor uncertain.

In July 2016, Bob Mansfield, a former Apple executive who retired from Apple in 2012, was hired back to Apple to lead the electric vehicle team.

Apple's automotive strategy shifted to fully autonomous driving after Mansfield began leading the project in the summer of 2016, it is said.

In August and September 2016, Apple laid off a large number of employees working on the project after an internal "reboot," many of whom had already joined other self-driving startups.

Apple has adjusted the project to focus more on the "underlying technology" of self-driving cars, rather than actually manufacturing complete vehicles.

While initial rumors suggested that the company was still developing the vehicle and continued to seek cooperation, later information indicated that work on the physical vehicle had been temporarily halted.

By then, Apple had received permission from the California DMV to test self-driving cars on public roads, and its vehicles were Lexus SUVs equipped with radar and sensor equipment, which had been spotted on the road.

In addition to this, Apple may have purchased a previously leased test site in Arizona.

And Apple also appears to be working on a self-driving shuttle bus program designed to transport employees between Apple's offices in Silicon Valley.

Apple is said to be trying to partner with Volkswagen to install its self-driving software on the T6 Transporter van as an employee shuttle.

In August 2018, there were rumors that Apple might once again explore the idea of developing a fully branded vehicle.

At the time, Mr. Kuo said Apple was working on an Apple Car that would launch between 2023 and 2025, despite rumors that Apple had stopped full-vehicle development for self-driving cars and focused on software instead.

In January 2019, Apple once again removed more than 200 employees of the Titan Project.

In 2020, Bob Mansfield, who has overseen the project since 2016, retired again, and John Giannandria took over the car project. Apple's Kevin Lynch works on the Apple Car team in addition to working on the Apple Watch.

Doug Field, a former Tesla high pipe who led the Apple Car project with John Jennandria and Kevin Lynch, left the company in September 2021.

It's unclear what impact this might have on the development of apple cars, but it could be a major setback, as he's vice president of special development projects. Lynch later took over Field's job.

Apple acquired Drive.ai, a startup designing self-driving shuttle services, in June 2019. Apple has hired multiple engineering and product design employees Drive.ai for its self-driving car project.

In early 2020, Apple held talks with electric car company Canoo, but the engagement eventually broke up.

There are almost no executives left

Project Titan initially had more than 1,000 employees, but went through a number of personnel changes.

In 2016, Steve Zadesky, one of the original leaders of the project, left the company and was replaced by Chris Porritt, Tesla's vice president of automotive engineering.

In July 2016, Bob Mansfield, a longtime Apple executive, was rehired to work part-time on the project after Dan Riccio, a senior vice president of hardware engineering, seized control of the project.

The chubby one on the far right is Mr. Mansfield

All told, hundreds of people on the Titans team in 2016 either left their jobs on their own or were redistributed or laid off after a crisis of confidence in the direction of the project that year.

At the time, the remaining members of the team were allegedly asked to prove the viability of the fully autonomous driving technology by the deadline of late 2017.

In August and September 2016, the Titan Project laid off employees. More than 120 software engineers in charge of the car's operating system and test procedures were laid off, and hundreds of hardware engineers responsible for parts such as the body, suspension system and car chassis disappeared from the employee sequence.

It is said that the remaining employees at that time were not only writing the code for autonomous driving, but also responsible for building sensors and simulators for practical testing. Software engineers and hardware engineers live on their shoulders.

John Wright, the experienced Apple manager who led the software work, left at the time. Dan Dodge, the creator of the QNX automotive platform poached from BlackBerry, has since played a bigger role in developing the architecture of the Apple Car platform.

However, in 2016, Apple's Car project also poached the big man: Alexander Hitzinger, Porsche's head of racing. Reports at the time said he was poached to do "something that has a significant and direct impact on society."

Hitzinger worked at Apple until January 2019, when he was poached by Volkswagen to join its commercial vehicle division.

In March 2017, Apple seemed to be adding weight to its car:a research lab was set up in Switzerland, staffed by ETH Zurich, specializing in computer vision, robotics and visual navigation.

Local reports quoted Roland Siegwart, a professor of automated systems at the university, as saying that five specialists in his lab had jumped ship to "multinational organizations," but he could not confirm the existence of Apple's research and development facilities.

It was reported in 2017 that a team of four people, once employed by NASA, was working on Apple's automotive business, specifically its self-driving software.

According to a Report by the Wall Street Journal in April 2017, three engineers from the test evaluation project had previously worked at NASA's prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory and had worked on projects including 3D object detection and motion planning algorithms.

Another test operator is said to have been involved in the early development of self-driving cars by car supplier Bosch and also has experience in projects to make autonomous wheelchairs run more smoothly.

In August 2017, Apple hired more staff for its self-driving program.

Insider magazine's report cites a source familiar with Apple's technology and other similar self-driving platform technologies, saying that the new employees Apple recruits focus on people with experience in producing software for self-driving cars.

A report at the end of the same month said that 17 engineers in Apple's car project had jumped ship to self-driving startup Zoox.

These engineers were previously selected by Apple from traditional automakers, including employees who specialize in braking, suspension and other automotive mechanical systems.

Engineers left after finding themselves less involved in projects than before. This may have something to do with Apple withdrawing its vehicle plans and shifting to focus on self-driving software systems.

Apple poached John Giannandrea from Google in April 2018 to take charge of its machine learning and AI strategy missions. Some of them allegedly involve self-driving car systems that rely on these technologies.

In June 2018, Apple hired Jamie Waydo, a former senior engineer at Waymo and a member of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

In the same month, it was reported that Mark Rober, a Former NASA engineer, assisted Apple in developing a VR system for its car project.

Doug Field, who previously served as Apple's vice president of Mac hardware engineering, was poached back to the company in August 2018 after five years at Tesla.

A report in August 2018 said that Apple poached at least 46 employees from Tesla that year, some of whom had previously been poached by former colleagues who had been fired by Tesla.

However, despite the influx of employees with experience in the automotive industry, it is clear that not all of them have been allocated to the Titan Project.

In December 2018, Tesla senior designer Andrew Kim was recruited to work at Apple. During his tenure at Tesla, Kim worked on automotive interior design, focusing on dashboard layout.

In early 2019, it was reported that Apple had laid off more than 200 employees of Project Titan, which was internally known as a "team restructuring." Apple later confirmed plans to lay off 190 people from the project.

In March 2019, Apple hired Michael Schwekutsch. Schwekutsch was Tesla's vice president of engineering and has extensive experience in powertrain development, which strongly suggests that vehicle development remains the focus of Apple's Car project.

In June 2019, Apple stepped up its efforts in autonomous driving by acquiring Drive.ai, a startup in the field. Apple confirmed that the acquisition allowed dozens of employees, new car prototypes and other assets of the Drive.ai to enter Apple's car project.

In July 2019, Apple hired Steve MacManus, a former Tesla vice president of engineering who is a veteran of the auto industry. McManus has the vague title of "senior executive" at Apple, but he is supposed to be part of the Titans team.

From 2021 to June, Dave Scott, Jaime Waydo, and Benjamin Lyon, technology executives in Apple's self-driving division, left in succession.

In September 2021, Doug Field withdrew from the Apple Car team and left Apple again.

Doug Field now works for Ford Motor Company

In late January 2022, Bloomberg's tech reporter for Apple, Mark Gurman, reported that Joe Bass, who had been at Apple for seven years and was the head of software engineering for the automotive team, had left.

With his departure, almost all of Apple's previously poached Apple Car project executives left.

Resources:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/15/apple-car-team-dissolved-2025-launch-may-be-in-doubt-says-ming-chi-kuo

https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-car/

https://appleinsider.com/inside/apple-car

End

Source: Xinzhiyuan

In the comments section, you can add the wrong or missing parts of the article, so that the next person who sees it will learn more, and you know exactly what everyone needs...