Apple dismisses 200 employees from its Project Titan group

If you’re still dreaming of owning a shiny, white Apple Car one day, we’ve got some bad news for you: Apple just dismissed 200 employees from its autonomous vehicle group, internally dubbed Project Titan, CNBC reported Thursday.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed the news to CNBC, calling it a re-focus, with “some groups being moved to projects in other parts of the company.”

The spokesperson pointed out that the company still has a team working on autonomous systems, but its work is now focused on “several key areas.”

Layoffs, internal strife and pivots appeared to plague the project since the public first learned of it in 2014. The dream of Apple actually building a car you’ll be able to buy was severely diminished after the New York Times reported, back in 2017, that the company had refocused to build an autonomous shuttle for its employees. 

Still, the rumors never died. Apple enlisted its own ex-employee and Tesla engineering VP, Doug Field in August 2018 to lead the project, and hired ex-Tesla designer Andrew Kim in December 2018. Furthermore, Tim Cook himself said that machine learning and autonomous cars are incredibly important for the company’s future. 

This latest round of layoffs does not instill hope that the company is still serious about building an actual car, and poses questions about Apple’s ambitions regarding autonomous vehicles in general. 

Then again, you never know what Apple is cooking behind closed doors. 

“We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems,” Apple told CNBC.