Cook is unwilling to invest resources in mass production, and has been questioned and ridiculed by other departments. The future of Apple's car-making journey is bleak.

Inside Apple, the car-making department is questioned and ridiculed.

Apple’s car-making has always been a hot topic of concern to people in the field.

As early as 2014, Apple internally approved and launched a car-making project called Titan. Its goal is to build electric vehicles with fully autonomous driving capabilities to face competition from Tesla and other car companies. But until 2016, the project struggled with leadership confusion, visionary planning and the direction of self-driving technology.

Recently, Apple’s autonomous driving R&D team has been frequently exposed to the resignation of senior executives. For example, three senior leaders, Benjamin Lyon, Dave Scott, and Jaime Waydo, resigned one after another in the first half of 2021. Automotive business executive Doug Field also resigned in the first half of 2021. Will switch to Ford in September 2021. In March this year, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo even broke the news that Apple’s car-making team has been disbanded and mass production may not be possible by 2025.

Unfavorable news comes one after another, making people wonder: What happened to Apple’s car-making business? Today, foreign media The Information wrote an article analyzing Apple’s troubled self-driving electric car project.

Apple’s self-driving car project, Titan, has proven to be a huge challenge for the company. The report lays out a detailed timeline of the Titan project to date, covering turbulent management, high turnover throughout the car-building team, and constant shifts in car-building goals.

What are the problems with Apple’s car-building project?

The Information report also revealed some interesting new details. For Project Titan, which costs Apple more than $1 billion a year to develop, company executives are skeptical of the entire project.

Among them, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi is particularly skeptical of the Titan project. As a result of Project Titan's setbacks and reset of goals, it was ridiculed by other parts of Apple.

More sources said that Apple CEO Cook prefers to stay away from product design and refused to visit the Titan project’s office in Santa Clara, California. Cook has been unwilling to devote resources to mass-producing the car, much to the frustration of project executives.

Meanwhile, there are numerous examples of Apple struggling on the software front. According to reports, Apple has encountered demonstration problems on more than one occasion, with test vehicles performing well on predetermined routes but quickly running into problems in areas where navigation is unknown and often having to hand over control of the vehicle to a backup driver.

The Information report also raised some of the most worrying issues. There was a near miss earlier this year. When a jogger was crossing the road, Apple's test self-driving car did not stop and give way. It only slightly adjusted its direction and avoided a collision after a safety officer slammed on the brakes. Apple concluded that without the intervention of a human driver, the car would have likely struck the jogger.

These near misses happen to anyone pushing the autonomous driving field, including Waymo. However, the frequent departures of executives leading the development direction of Apple's Titan project have caused its car-making to encounter more serious setbacks. In particular, Doug Field's job-hopping in 2021 will cause the biggest blow to Apple's car manufacturing. Recently, Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, also resigned due to dissatisfaction with the return to work policy.

Now, Kevin Lynch, who previously worked on Apple’s smartwatches and health software, has taken over some of the software work on the car project. But because he is not from the automotive industry, it has also aroused doubts from some people within the company.

Unknown Apple Car Design

As for what the final Apple Car will look like, we can expect a futuristic design both inside and out. It is reported that Apple hopes to obtain permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to build a car without a traditional steering wheel or brake pedal. Apple has even discussed the possibility of allowing passengers to lie flat and sleep in the car.

Jony Ive, Apple's former chief designer, advised the Titan team to "focus on the 'weird' aspects of the vehicle design and not try to hide the vehicle sensors." He is still involved in Apple's car-building project as a consultant.

The report stated that the current design of Apple Car is "four facing seats, where passengers can talk to each other. There is also a curved ceiling similar to the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle." Apple designers have discussed large displays that would rise from behind these seats and lower themselves automatically when not in use. The next generation of CarPlay that Apple showed off at this year's WWDC conference may be a preview of what's on these large displays.

Source: Apple

Finally, the report also claims that Apple is talking about how to hide the latest prototype of its self-driving car during public testing. However, they may still be several years away from official release. ​

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