Apple is said to have laid off dozens of employees who were working on the corporation’s self-driving car initiative.
Previously, Apple had been internally working on Project Titan, an effort to build an electric vehicle. The project was never formally revealed, but it had been reported as early as the beginning of 2015 by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that an Apple-branded electric car was in the works.
Since the WSJ report, Apple had hired a number of influential individuals from the auto industry, while also filing patents for technology that they would use in the production of their vehicles.
There were also rumors that unmarked cars driving around San Francisco that had sensor and camera equipment on them were owned by Apple.
Recent reports had suggested that Apple has pivoted from building an entire vehicle to simply designing the technology for a self-driving car, which would make sense with the news of Apple’s layoffs.
Just this past July, Apple promoted a software engineer to head the autonomous car project at Apple. It is said that despite gradually dedicating more resources to Project Titan over the past two years, they struggled with making progress.
The employees let go have been told that their dismissal is part of a “reboot” on Apple’s part.
A number of prominent companies are active in the the self-driving movement, including Google, Tesla, Uber, General Motors, and Ford.
