APPLE’S SECRETIVE SELF-DRIVING-CAR PROJECT HITS A ROADBLOCK
The tech giant has reportedly laid off dozens of employees amid a strategy “reboot” for Project Titan.
The battle to build a self-driving car, the biggest, richest tech giants are falling behind. While Tesla and Uber are racing toward getting a fully autonomous vehicle to market—on Sunday Tesla announced a new update to its self-driving software, while Uber is expected to launch its first fleet of experimental self-driving cars in Pittsburgh any day now—Google’s program is reportedlylanguishing, despite having gotten a multi-year head start. Now Apple, which has been silently working on its own car project, has reportedly hit some major roadblocks of its own.
Not much is known about Apple’s ultra-secretive car endeavor, Project Titan. Apple has never publicly acknowledged the project, and C.E.O. Tim Cook has spoken in only the vaguest terms about the potential for an Apple vehicle. “There will be a massive change in the industry,” he said onstage in October at the WSJDLive conference. In July, the company appointed longtime Apple executive Bob Mansfield to head up the company’s car-making efforts, leading to reports that Project Titan and its team of reportedly “hundreds” of employees had been tentatively scheduled to launch in 2021.
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