Apple's "car-making dream" seems to have ended before it has begun.
A few days ago, according to foreign media reports, Tianfeng Securities analyst Guo Mingxi broke the news on social media: Apple's auto team has been disbanded for a period of time. If you want to mass-produce Apple Car in 2025, you need to reorganize the team again in 3-6 months.
Apple's road to car building has not been smooth for many years. Although Apple disclosed the "Titan Plan" to build cars in 2014, there has been no substantial progress, and the follow-up has adjusted the goal of "building complete vehicles" to automatic driving software development. Since then, a large number of employees responsible for automotive hardware research and development have been exposed to leaving. In order to fill the talent gap, Apple restarted the apple Car project team recruitment in 2020 and sought to shorten the car-making process by acquiring electric vehicle company Canoo, etc., but the results ended in failure.
In 2021, several executives of Apple's automotive team left, and the Apple auto project began to be run by Kevin Lynch, who is not experienced in the automotive field. In January, Joe Bass, head of software engineering for Apple's automotive team, also announced his departure from Apple. Previously, he was alleged to have worked on Apple's auto project for 7 years. His departure seems to indicate that the car management team previously formed by Apple has completely "fallen apart".
Some insiders told the Southern + reporter that the current smart car market still has a large space to play, including millet, Baidu and other companies in China have chosen to "cross-border car manufacturing", Huawei and other areas of automotive software, operating systems, automatic driving software and other areas to step up investment, if Apple missed this wave of industry development "dividend period", the follow-up market competition pressure may be greater.
What do you think?
[Reporter] Xu Jun
【Author】 Xu Jun
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client