Apple Inc is rethinking what it plans to do about self-driving cars, just as other big tech companies appear ready to plow ahead with competing efforts.
In a retrenchment of one of its most ambitious initiatives, Apple has shuttered parts of its self-driving car project and laid off dozens of employees, according to three people briefed on the move who were not allowed to speak about it publicly.
The job cuts are the latest sign of trouble with Apple’s car initiative. The company has added resources to the project — code-named Titan — over the past two years, but it has struggled to make progress.
In July, the company brought in Bob Mansfield, a highly regarded Apple veteran, to take over the effort.
Apple is not the only big tech company pursuing autonomous driving technology. However, the firm has stood out from the others mainly for its secrecy.
Apple has never acknowledged that it is working on a car, although chief executive officer Tim Cook has said the automotive industry is undergoing a drastic change and, earlier this year, he seemed to confirm the existence of the car project at its annual shareholders meeting.
“Do you remember when you were a kid, and Christmas Eve, it was so exciting, you weren’t sure what was going to be downstairs?” Cook said at the meeting. “Well, it’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while.”
Apple employees were told that the layoffs were part of a “reboot” of the car project, the people briefed on it said.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Under Mansfield, Apple changed the focus of the project, shifting from an emphasis on designing and producing an automobile to building out the underlying technology for an autonomous vehicle. Bloomberg earlier reported the strategy change.
The company started looking seriously into building an electric car about two years ago. It expanded the project quickly, poaching experts in battery technology and so-called “machine vision,” as well as veterans from the automobile industry.
The team also pulled in staff members from other divisions across Apple, growing to more than 1,000 employees in about 18 months.
However, as the project grew rapidly, it encountered a number of problems, and people working on it struggled to explain what Apple could bring to a self-driving car that other companies could not, according to the people briefed on the project.
Steven Zadesky, a long-time Apple employee initially charged with heading the car effort, left the company for personal reasons this year. His departure opened the door for Mansfield, who worked closely with Apple’s cofounder Steve Jobs, but left the company’s executive team in 2013.
He had all, but retired from Apple except for the occasional visit to the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. He was coaxed into coming back to oversee the project, which could represent a new market for Apple as sales of its flagship iPhone are slowing.
Apple has also made some headway in the space. The company has a number of fully autonomous vehicles in the middle of testing, using limited operating routes in a closed environment, according to people briefed on the company’s plans.
Like other companies in the space, that technology is likely a number of years away from seeing mainstream consumer use, they added.
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