We hardly knew you, Apple Car. RIP.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, verified in 2017 what the whole world’s auto industry had long suspected: the digital behemoth was developing an autonomous vehicle.

Our area of interest is self-governing systems. And it’s obvious that self-driving cars are one of the goals of autonomous systems,” Cook stated in a Bloomberg interview. And in a way, we regard it as the origin of all AI initiatives. We’re really excited about autonomy because it’s perhaps one of the most challenging AI projects to work on, but we’ll see where it leads.

It went practically nowhere for Apple. With the majority of the crew switching other generative AI projects, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on Tuesday that Apple was abandoning its covert auto project. Probably, others would lose their jobs. Along with other doomed products like the Apple TV and the Paladin, it was assumed that the car will be discontinued.

“We consider it to be the mother of all AI initiatives,”

Apple is back where it began with Project Titan, some ten years after it was initially introduced. Even in its final moments, it stays a vague, enigmatic object that never quite takes shape beyond the crude, ashamed fantasies of the company’s most ardent supporters. Even though it appears to have been a largely fruitless endeavour, investors and possible rivals alike are applauding the move to end operations.

Wall Street has never been a fan of Apple’s car adventures; they see it as a pricey diversion with more drawbacks than benefits. Dan Ives of Wedbush praised Apple for “ripping the band-aid off,” saying that this was “clearly the right move for Cook & Co. moving forward.” Analysts at Morgan Stanley commended the business for “focused on what counts” and “exhibiting cost discipline.

It is still, till the very end, a vague, enigmatic item.

 The idea isn’t that an Apple automobile wouldn’t be important in the long run; rather, it’s that the business would have been better served by concentrating on more innovative and in-demand technologies, like artificial intelligence.

The fact that the future of electric and driverless automobiles appears dismal concurrently with the collapse of the Apple car is not surprising. The sector is going through significant growth pains, despite years of promises that battery-powered, autonomous vehicles would soon dominate personal transportation. Reductions in investments, suspension of factories, and cancellation of model lineups are occurring. Companies that manufacture only plug-in cars, such as Rivian and Lucid, are having trouble finding consumers because most people are either hedging their bets with a hybrid or searching for something more economical.

The electronics giant Apple would probably face comparable challenges if it were to abruptly enter this market, according to Sam Abuelsamid, chief analyst at Guidehouse Insights.

“Apple is going to have an increasingly competitive premium market because they won’t want to sell entry-level EVs, which is an increasing problem with affordability,” he stated. It will be difficult for another newcomer like Apple to sell pricey EVs if Lucid and Rivian are unable to do so with goods as good as theirs.

A completely driverless car would have been equally, if not more, challenging. Just take a look at the increasingly dangerous exploits of the numerous robotaxi businesses in California, where vehicles are colliding with bikers, buses, and pedestrians more often than not. Apple, which has always been very aware of its image, should steer clear of headlines like this one.

It’s not surprising that the future of electric and driverless automobiles is looking bleaker as the Apple car dies.

 Undoubtedly, creating the technology and software required for an autonomous vehicle to function appeared more in line with Apple’s capabilities than creating the entire vehicle from the ground up. And the business obviously made some headway in that regard, running a small fleet of cars in California and even providing federal regulators with an amusingly terse seven-page safety report.

However, Apple never truly caught up to its competitors, who had more resources to deal with and had been working on this issue for longer. It never got approval from California authorities to drive its cars without front-seat safety drivers. Additionally, the company’s fleet size remained mostly unchanged. Apple, though, adhered to it. According to The Washington Post, the business outpaced Waymo and Cruise in terms of the rate at which the miles driven by their autonomous cars increased last year.

 Yes, Apple is able to install software and sensors in a number of cars to enable self-driving capabilities. Many businesses are able to achieve that. In California, more than thirty companies have autonomous vehicles operating on public roads. Finding a number of Toyota Highlanders and equipping them with lidar and cameras is not too difficult.

 Apple never managed to overtake its competitors.

However, the subsequent and subsequent steps proved to be too intimidating. The only way Apple could pull this off, given the company’s control freakishness, was probably as a closed robotaxi ecosystem, maybe as a monthly subscription service. However, that business plan has not yet been validated. Not even Elon Musk seems to be able to solve the arithmetic or the technology.

 Its rumoured deals never materialised. It intended to collaborate with BMW. Hold on, that’s Volkswagen. Well, what about Hyundai, really? or Nissan? Apple made the decision to switch to software after learning that none of the major automakers would agree to produce its vehicle. Drive was purchased.AI acquired the small team of AV engineers from the firm just days before it would have gone bankrupt. Furthermore, it was never able to determine exactly who ought to be in command of the entire endeavour.

 At last, in January, Project Titan received an order from the top executives to either put up or shut up. According to Bloomberg, Level 2+ ADAS, which is similar to GM’s Super Cruise or Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, has replaced self-driving automobiles. Launched in 2028 instead of 2027.

But it wasn’t. The plug was removed a few weeks later. The Apple vehicle was completely destroyed. There is much that we will never know. (Source: theverge.com)