For the last decade, many Apple employees working on the company’s secretive “Project Titan” electric vehicle project called it “The Titanic Disaster.” (We’d have gone with “Project Titanic.”) Amidst the layoffs, constant staffing and goal changes, and a general stench of failure permeating the effort, they knew the project was doomed to fail, The New York Times reports Thursday.
Brian X. Chen and Tripp Mickle for The New York Times:
Throughout its existence, the car effort was scrapped and rebooted several times, shedding hundreds of workers along the way. As a result of dueling views among leaders about what an Apple car should be, it began as an electric vehicle that would compete against Tesla and morphed into a self-driving car to rival Google’s Waymo.
By the time of its death — Tuesday, when executives announced internally that the project was being killed and that many members of the team were being reassigned to work on artificial intelligence — Apple had burned more than $10 billion on the project and the car had reverted to its beginnings as an electric vehicle with driving-assistance features rivaling Tesla’s, according to a half dozen people who worked on the project over the past decade.
The car project’s demise was a testament to the way Apple has struggled to develop new products in the years since Steve Jobs’s death in 2011… Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, approved the project in part to prevent an exodus of engineers to Tesla.
MacDailyNews Take: Unfocused dysfunctional hubris is exactly what competent leadership avoids.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
This falls on Cook. A lack of vision and direction are obvious. He’s a brilliant CEO in many ways. But he doesn’t have that visionary understanding of tech that is needed to push ahead. And, even if he hires or appoints someone to be that visionary, he won’t let go and give them the ability and resources to create a breakthrough.
My example is AppleTV+. Cook approves every show.
When you are committed Democrat you believe a lot of amazing things. You believe the earth will end pretty soon if you personally don’t act to fix the global temperature. You believe there are an unlimited number of genders and any person can be any one of these on any given day. You believe that science only begins when you say. For example, prior to March 2020, there was no “science” related to how to deal with seasonal respiratory viruses, and so an entire new science had to be created to deal with the first of its kind virus of 2020. Masks which never worked before now would work if you wore them all the time, two at a time, except in a restaurant while you eat and then you can take it off. And if you stand 6′ from others you won’t get or transmit a virus. On an airplane, 6″ is the rule. Or 6 mm. And you believe all energy that heats and cools, homes, powers transportation, and all our consumer devices, must come from windmills and solar panels or it is no good. And all plastic are evil because they come from oil, which is evil. So, all cars and all modes of transportation must be converted to windmills and solar. If you are a Democrat you actually believe that.
So, the point is, Democrats are pretty stupid. So, the idea of spending tens of billions of dollars to create an electric car that serves a market (no steering wheel no gas pedal) that nobody wants powered by coal and natural gas to save the planet from greenhouse gases, this seems like a great idea.. If you are a Democrat. But, then you are a person that thinks Al Gore is smart and Hillary is attractive and Michelle Obama is a woman.
This type of stamping a green, progressive adenda with American Party politics is probably the most perplexing thing a non American can witness.
It’s not only perplexing it’s troubling. Guns, gas, prolife vs living people, clean energy, living people’s right to there own life. Your so backwards I think the mid 20’th century is calling you.
Killing babies whenever possible, filthy energy from rare earth minerals mined by destitute children in flip flops wading in toxic waste to feed EV lithium to wealthy virtue signallers. Insufferable arrogant do nothings who spend their days figuring out which new pronouns must be used to address them, or a torrent of outrage will pollute the air around them.
“prolife vs living people.” Magic. Way to insert a presumptive “fact” that shows your illogical bias. There’s few to none…pro-life advocates that embrace that ideology. Pro-life/pro-responsibility, fits better. A society that kills their own NEVER fares well in history…and claiming “choice” as a cover “to there (sic) own life” is emblematically sour and dour. There are few realities in life that support that kind of freedom…if one embraces, “do no harm.”
And you just proved my point 🤨
It up to you if you have kids. If you’re forced to give birth, it’s against your wishes.
Prolife vs living people.
My ev is quiet, cheap, fast, comfortable and super convenient. Battery tech will improve if we buy into the tech. Fossil fuel has literally killed the planet compared to Lithium mining which may not be the best. But hey, on balance…
Guns vs life..
Well dam me… more guns is proven to kill more people… or do you think somehow it gives you a magic shield.
Have some common sense you right wing nutters and stop forcing your weird and perverse ideals on the world around you. Go form a commune with all the anti vaxers, take trump with you and spare the rest of us your convoluted drivel.
I justify the above, based on the raving right wing claptrap throw my way.
“Forced to give birth.” “Funny,” I guess the volitional part that occurred prior was forgotten, or is somehow irrelevant? Maybe there’s a taskmaster forcing you or, I’d guess, you seek the pro-choice solution to enable your recreation…side-stepping personal responsibility for gratification’s sake?
The green, progressive agenda is a multi-trillion dollar industry that expands via news propaganda. It’s a bit like the novel 1984 and even the Mac ad in 1984.
For what actual gains? Well a trillion spent so far has zero to show for it. The focus should be pollution in China and Africa but that’s not a money-maker so it’s not in the “news”.
Well said. Libturd stupidity is astounding
I’m unable to say, all “Democrats pretty are stupid,” but it’s fairly clear that the discordant and noneffective aims of today (immigration, new green deal, restorative justice and VERY bent ideas on race and gender) flow from the left and all are signs of suffering from The Fatal Conceit. It’s taken awhile (some were obviously illogical from the beginning), but time is confirming the focus was idealogical and w/o objective merit…pursued anyways b/c of the hubris; it’s best for the culture and we/I know best. “The Science,” was a meme that was to “prove” veracity re: AGW, but it’s a exemplitive cherry atop the whole mess…as if it proves/proved anything. And, if one confidently sat behind the “protection” of this meme, please check yourself in to be tested for The Fatal Conceit. The bet Tony is working on a vax to assist.
AGW as you call is based on the “science” that predict future temperatures assuming that “the sun” is not a factor in global temperatures. It’s no wonder these people think a man can breastfeed a baby. They are retarded. No offense to the mentally handicapped.
I’m unable to say, all “Democrats pretty are stupid,” You should say it, loud.
By definition, being a demonrat means that you support demonrat ideals. That is the definition of stupid.
liberal+shit for brains=libturds
Apple has talent and a lot of discipline, but Tim has never been, nor will be, a visionary leader. And while he was a good manager, he should have departed after Apple Watch and moved on.
Apple needs a visionary to take the helm. Someone with balls that could take Project Titan and start it with focus and a small team, but not an EV. Tesla Purple Cow’d the market with their own nation-wide charging stations and vehicle efficiencies and then scale.
Now Telsa is running traditional players out of the game. As they reap cost savings on unified chassis casting architecture (which legacy automotive companies should have done decades ago), and their updated battery tech driving savings, Musk isn’t passing that along to shareholders. Rather, the moment he has enough savings to wrap decently stronger profits he quickly passes that along to the consumer in lower costs.
Tesla’s margins per vehicle continue to slide, but prices are dropping rapidly, and sales for Tesla continue to grow.
Meanwhile, Ford is losing $37k per EV sale! Their idea to treat the division was good one, but no one is looking at the resources (well now they are) and how utterly impossible it is to convert all vehicles to EV’s. 15 million vehicles sold in the US in 2023, and for those to be pure EV’s for decades, we’d need to strip mine the planet to death, continue chewing up resources out of Africa while tens of thousands of child slave labor, and unless people are willing to go Nuclear plants, burn a lot more could and coal, it’s a total mess…
Toyota and Hyundai see this and are taking charge with Hydrogen, and hybrid lineups until that flourishes.
Why would Apple want to:
– Enter a market with slowing sales (yes, there is still growth, but the growth curve is slowing, as it appears a lux commuter market for some time to come).
– Almost everyone but Telsa is losing money in the EV market. Some are making barely single digit gross margins.
– Apple’s vehicle was likely loaded with tech and thus cost.
Is Apple the kind of company that wants to build something that only highly affluent folks can afford ($70k+), and make single digit profits or lose lots of money for an undefined period of time to – perhaps – get to some sort of profit on low volume sales?
That’s not a market Apple wants to play in.
IF, Apple wants to get involved with vehicles again, they need a new leader at the top that has some balls and vision:
Push to hydrogen fuel cells or combustion hydrogen (both produce water as the byproduct).
Build out their own hydrogen stations. Partnering with someone like Costco would prove huge, as Costo wants vehicles that utilize some sort of fuel. Charging stations at Costo? Uh, no, that does not work. But fueling up like a ICE vehicle? That fits perfectly.
Apple builds out their own stations across the grid were needed.
Apple launches 2 or 3 vehicles on a same platform design, at once.
That’s how Apple Purple Cows this ICE, Hybrid, Plug-in, Pure EV, jumbled mash up of a vehicle market. They simply leapfrog it and do what Tesla did to the ICE market.
Takes someone with vision, guts, and ability to get this going.
It simply takes someone other than Tim, and someone who can lead with Vision and drive.
Yes, the only man on planet Earth, Sir Elon Musk to replace Time Cook!!
Imagine the possibilities…
Apple doesn’t need a toxic workplace led by a drug addict. Just look at the recent articles about Tesla.
R, Thanks for showing your stupidity to the world
Tesla was founded in 2003 and they still can’t get full self driving live what made Cook think that apple could start from scratch and make it happen?
How does a car “enrich” a life?
I hope that apple was at least not planning to make a car but just an os for a car since they could probably do that better than traditional automakers.
They can’t even make a cellular modem and they bought an already existing cellular modem group from intel.
In Cook’s defence he didn’t apply for this particular role at apple.
LOL…what a waste of time, money and resources. It was never going to be the cash cow like iPhones and iPads are. Shame really as I would have loved to have watched Apple’s EV disaster unfold if it had been released.
Apple are no longer a “pioneering” tech company that they used to be and thank goodness.
Congratulations Tim Cook, you are now officially certified useless.
I was hoping Titan would become a self-driving platform integrated with Carplay that would be sold to other manufactures. Apparently, Cook isnt even smart enough to do that. Thanks Timmy!!