How Apple’s Car Failed In A $2 Trillion Industry
How Project Titan failed Apple after 10 years
Around 2014, rumours were swirling that Apple was attempting a secretive project, codenamed Project Titan. They aimed to disrupt the automotive industry like they disrupted the phone industry in 2008 with the iPhone. However, their goal of a fully autonomous electric vehicle that was the future of driving in the “Apple Way” had failed.
The project failed completely despite Apple investing about $1B into the Apple Car division and losing at least 15B after 10 years. Why & How?
The Plans for Project Titan
Despite Apple’s secretive nature and how well they hide the release of their new products, the rumours of the car were only strengthened by what Tim Cook had said to Bloomberg about the three pillars of a “future’ car.
- Electric Cars
- Ridesharing
- And Self-Driving
This was not just one, but three ways Apple could have broken into a $2T industry. By developing an electric car that was completely autonomous and offered a service like ridesharing, this was probably the most Apple car ever, following their tried and tested strategy.
A Decision to Make
In 2014, Apple had a decision to make: should it buy the up-and-coming car company Tesla? After much thought, Apple thought no and decided they would do it themselves. The Project Titan’s team was given billions of dollars in funds to build a car, the future of a car, with the help of whoever they wanted.
But this team also had a tough decision to make by 2016: should it be competing with Tesla, or Google’s Waymo? By then, they had problems with profits and how to produce the cars, which led to layoffs and then a focus on just self-driving.
This gave them some flexibility: they could now partner with other companies, and once they did that, they could go back and build the car later. This same strategy can be seen with the Vision Pro, with Apple focusing on spatial audio in their pre-existing devices before actually building a device with Spatial Audio.
The Pillars Fall
Do you remember the three pillars that Tim Cook mentioned that were the future of automobiles? Well, by 2020, Uber’s stocks begin to fall, breaking the ridesharing idea. On the other hand, Tesla boomed to a $1 trillion company, showing that they had finished cracking down on electric vehicles.
Despite these two pillars falling, the leader of this Project, Doug Field presents what his team was able to create in the past few years. But despite Tim Cook liking the new product, Field left and Kevin Lynch came forward to replace him.
But then it was too late.
The Future Has Ended
Self-driving technology begins to show so many of its cons that people begin to understand full autonomy would probably take years, if not a decade. At the same time, EV stops being the new thing and starts dipping in sales, as they become harder to afford, with more and more EVs in the market and them not doing well in a second-hand market.
The problem is, that ChatGPT has been released and people become crazy about AI. Google had their own AI, Anthropic created Claude, and new companies were coming forward to create and showcase their AI models. But Apple’s Siri, and therefore any hope of a generative AI in Apple was incredibly low.
This prompted Apple to shut down Project Titan and kill the Apple Car. They instead repurposed their team for AI and developing AI.
Goodbye
The Apple Car was a vehicle that could have had real potential if Apple had put more thought into it. Instead of solely focusing on profits, though understandable considering investors, they should have focused more on designing a product that looked good, worked well, and most importantly, was great.
Now that the Apple Car is gone as the “next big thing”, we have a new Vision Pro and the Apple Intelligence. It's going to be exciting to see where the two new things could go in the future.
Hello there! I just want to tell you that most of my research came from MacRumors, Apple Insider, Bloomberg and Bloomberg Originals. Please consider following me for more stories or leaving a clap if you liked the story.
