Crash of the Titan: a short history of Apple’s doomed car project

Apple’s long-rumored driverless automobile challenge, also called Challenge Titan, has been shuttered. However the firm didn’t announce its cancellation. In actual fact, Apple barely ever talked about the secretive challenge regardless of laboring on it for practically a decade. 

Challenge Titan was apparent from the surface — from automotive trade hiring to closely documented, public testing of self-driving vehicles, there was no method it might keep a secret. However the firm nonetheless tried to protect the thriller — when CEO Tim Prepare dinner was requested concerning the challenge on an investor name in 2016, he responded with cryptic talk about how thrilling Christmas Eve is, including that “it’s going to be Christmas Eve for some time.”

Now we all know Prepare dinner’s Christmas by no means got here. This week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman broke the news that Apple will not be making a car, dashing the hopes of any Apple fan who dreamed of cruising round in a Jony Ive-designed roadster. However Apple’s automobile issues return a bit farther than 2014, the 12 months early reviews pegged the corporate’s first actual strikes to spin up Challenge Titan. Slightly over eight years in the past, Nest founder Tony Fadell revealed that, whereas he was nonetheless at Apple, he and Steve Jobs had tossed around the idea for an Apple Car in 2008.

They agreed that, as cool as they thought that might be, Apple was simply too busy. The corporate had solely simply launched the iPhone — the iPad, Apple’s companies enterprise explosion, and Siri have been nonetheless forward of it.

However six years after Fadell and Jobs’ idle conversations, issues have been completely different. The corporate itself was probably the most useful on the earth, and its merchandise have been selling like hotcakes. Apple was filled with momentum and rising fatter with money each day, however there was no assure that its gadgets would maintain the corporate increasing with their upward gross sales trajectory. 

Trying down the road, Apple already had its palms, fairly efficiently, in so many pies — computer systems, telephones, audio gamers, as an illustration, and it was getting ready to launch its smartwatch and line of Bluetooth headphones. If it was going to mild the world on fireplace once more, it wanted to go massive with one thing — why, then, shouldn’t it make a automobile?

So started an almost 10-year slog of sky-high expectations that even the world’s richest firm couldn’t hope to satisfy. Apple has accomplished rather a lot to push shopper electronics ahead through the years. However no one can do all the things, and the Apple Automotive is as fantastic a cautionary story about that as any.

February 2015: The rumor mill begins cranking in earnest after a self-driving Dodge Caravan with chunky sensors adorning the roof is spotted driving around California’s San Francisco Bay Space. A CBS News story on the time finds it’s leased to Apple, which has no testing allow for driverless vehicles. However, it sparks hypothesis that the corporate is making an autonomous automobile.

Inside days, reviews emerge that Apple has been heavily recruiting auto experts for what it calls “Challenge Titan,” a secret effort to make an all-electric self-driving automobile. Prepare dinner reportedly approved the plan a 12 months prior, and the corporate has set a staff of 1,000 folks on it, led by former Ford engineer Steve Zadesky. Apple hopes to start selling the car in 2020.

However can Apple really pull this off? Former GM CEO Dan Akerson is maybe a touch skeptical. He tells Bloomberg, “We take metal, uncooked metal, and switch it right into a automobile. They do not know what they’re stepping into in the event that they get into that.”

July 2015: Reviews stated that Prepare dinner visited BMW’s headquarters in 2014. He and different executives wished to find out about how the corporate makes its vehicles, and have been reportedly keenly within the i3, BMW’s tiny electrical hatchback. It’s the primary rumbling of potential partnerships between Apple and an automaker, however the Reuters report on the conferences means that their talks have already pale.

September 2015: The Wall Avenue Journal reviews that Apple expects to ship its car in 2019, and has tripled the unique 600-person staff. This similar month, the California DMV confirms that it lately met with Apple to go over the DMV’s autonomous car laws.

October 2015: Sources from Mission Motors, an electrical motorbike startup, declare the corporate was bankrupted by Apple’s aggressive poaching.

Fall of 2015: Prepare dinner and Jony Ive meet on the challenge’s headquarters in Sunnyvale for an odd demo of what driving in a Siri-powered automobile might be like. According to the New York Times:

The 2 males sank into the seats of a cabinlike inside. Outdoors, a voice actor learn from a script of what Siri would say as the boys zoomed down the street within the imaginary automobile. Mr. Ive requested Siri what restaurant they handed and the actor learn a solution, stated two folks accustomed to the demonstration.

January 2016: Reviews present that Apple, or at the least a registrant claiming to be Apple, bought apple.cars and different, equally automotive-themed domains. However the first indicators of bother additionally seem as Zadesky departs Apple, leaving his submit as head of the automobile challenge vacant.

April 2016: German outlet Handelsblatt reviews that BMW / Daimler has given up on talks with Apple as a result of Apple desires the platform to be constructed “into its personal cloud software program,” which apparently doesn’t sit nicely with BMW’s future technique for buyer information safety.

July 2016: Zadesky’s emptiness is filled by Bob Mansfield, Apple’s former {hardware} engineering boss, who had left the corporate’s government staff in 2013 however stayed on for particular tasks. On the similar time, reviews say the automobile is delayed to 2021, and that Mansfield has hired a former BlackBerry automotive software program government to deal with autonomous driving. Bloomberg reports that internally, workers are confused about Challenge Titan’s path.

September 2016: Apple reportedly fires “dozens of workers” because it reconsiders its method to the automobile challenge. Later that month, rumors flow into that Apple is considering buying British supercar company McLaren and self-balancing motorcycle startup Lit Motors. Neither ever occurs.

October 2016: Apple has reportedly parked its plans to construct its personal automobile and can deal with creating self-driving software program for different corporations to make use of of their automobiles. Even so, Prepare dinner tosses a morsel to investors throughout an earnings name, saying that vehicles are “an space that it’s clear that there are quite a lot of applied sciences that can both turn out to be obtainable or will be capable of revolutionize the automobile expertise.”

April 2017: The California DMV gives Apple a permit to test-drive three 2015 Lexus RX 450h SUVs outfitted with autonomous driving tech. Certainly one of these vehicles is seen driving around Silicon Valley.

June 2017: Prepare dinner tells a Bloomberg interviewer that Apple is “specializing in autonomous methods,” calling it “the mom of all AI tasks.” He repeats the identical factor — nearly verbatim — throughout an investor name in August 2017, however suggests it’s about more than cars.

October 2017: The Apple Lexus SUV is spotted once more, this time with its assortment of sensors encased in white plastic, quite than the makeshift rig from the April sighting.

Might 2018: Apple reportedly companions with Volkswagen to make use of its T6 Transporter vans as self-driving shuttles to cart round Apple workers, representing something of a back-to-basics approach. Apple has extra autonomous check automobiles registered in California than Uber and Waymo mixed, for the second.

July 2018: Apple worker Xiaolang Zhang is arrested and accused of stealing the corporate’s commerce secrets and techniques to deliver again to a Chinese language automotive firm referred to as XMotors. On the similar time, The Washington Put up reviews that the corporate has 5,000 workers engaged on its automobile challenge both immediately or not directly.

August 2018: Somebody rear-ends an Apple autonomous test vehicle that’s attempting to merge onto an expressway. The identical month, Apple hires Doug Field, who’d beforehand left for Tesla in 2013, to assist lead Challenge Titan.

January 2019: Challenge Titan shrinks as Apple shuffles 200 of its workers to “help machine studying and different initiatives” elsewhere within the firm. Additionally, another Apple employee is arrested for allegedly stealing commerce secrets and techniques.

June 2019: Apple buys autonomous driving startup Drive.ai, an organization that was based 4 years earlier by Stanford College researchers and that ran a small self-driving shuttle service in Texas. The transfer is seen as an example of “acqui-hiring” to achieve entry to the startup’s small staff of AV engineers.

November 2019: Jony Ive leaves Apple. Whereas he might not have been totally hands-on with the Apple Automotive challenge, he did reportedly give lots of input, together with that the automobile shouldn’t have a steering wheel.

February 2020: Information reveals that Apple had logged fewer autonomous testing miles in 2019 than 2018 — by over 70,000 miles, the truth is. Which isn’t nice, because it put down 79,745 miles in 2018.

December 2020: Apple reportedly shifts oversight of its car project to John Giannandrea, who’s been heading up Siri and synthetic intelligence for the corporate since 2018. The identical month, reviews recommend that Apple is, as soon as once more, considering building its own car.

February 2021: Nevertheless it’s exhausting for Apple to make mates. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo corroborates different rumors suggesting that the corporate is working with Hyundai on an electrical automobile. Later that month, Hyundai and Kia downplay the rumor, saying that they’re not in talks to take action. Nissan additionally issues a statement, saying it isn’t discussing a automobile challenge with Apple.

September 2021: Area leaves Apple to work for Ford. Two days later, the corporate reportedly places Apple Watch government Kevin Lynch in charge of its car ambitions, underneath COO Jeff Williams quite than Giannandrea.

October 2021: Foxconn reveals off three electric car prototypes underneath the model “Foxtron.” Though the corporate isn’t planning to construct vehicles itself, it’s fascinating that the corporate most accountable for assembling Apple’s iPhones has been apparently growing an EV platform to promote to automakers.

November 2021: Apple hires another former Tesla employee, Christopher Moore, to work on self-driving software program for the corporate.

June 2022: A few of Apple’s work bears fruit at WWDC 2022 when it debuts the next-gen version of Apple CarPlay, designed to take over your entire sprint of a automobile. The corporate additionally declares a number of companions, together with Ford, Audi, Jaguar-Land Rover, and Nissan. (Thus far, it isn’t in any vehicles.)

July 2022: The struggles of Challenge Titan are specified by a report from The Information that claims Apple software program boss Craig Federighi was “significantly skeptical” of it, and that workers exterior of the challenge commonly mocked it. The report additionally stated {that a} check car practically hit a jogger earlier in 2022.

The Info particulars some design prospects for the automobile as nicely, together with that the corporate sought the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration’s blessing to create a automobile that had no conventional steering wheel or brake pedal, and that Ive had suggested the design staff to “lean into the weirdness of the car’s design and never attempt to cover its sensors.”

October 2022: Foxconn once more unveils EV prototypes, this time a crossover and a pickup truck. This time, the corporate says it desires to turn out to be a Tesla provider.

December 2022: Apple but once more scales back its plans for the automobile to have much less formidable self-driving capabilities than it initially deliberate. Additionally, the corporate is seemingly concentrating on a sub-$100,000 price ticket for the car and has now moved its launch plans again to 2026.

December 2023: After a sluggish 12 months in Apple Automotive information, Apple declares that Porsche and Aston Martin would incorporate bespoke versions of the dashboard-wide next-gen CarPlay infotainment system.

January 2024: Challenge Titan suffers two heavy blows as Apple reportedly pushes the car’s launch back two extra years to 2028. Shortly thereafter, {hardware} government DJ Novotney, who was ostensibly instrumental in beginning Titan, leaves to work for Rivian.

February 2024: Indicators of life! The California DMV data present that Apple logged practically half 1,000,000 miles of autonomous driving throughout most of 2023 — considerably greater than the 12 months earlier than

However that was 2023. On February twenty seventh, 2024, Bloomberg reports that the Apple Automotive is, after 10 years and billions spent, not to be. Rest in peace, little buddy.