Tech

Apple laid off dozens of employees working on its self-driving car

Read in app
Apple Car with Tim Cook wearing Apple watch and car play
Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Apple has laid off dozens of employees working on its self-driving car efforts, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Brian Chen report for The New York Times.

The company is apparently rethinking the strategy of its so-called Project Titan car initiative, with employees being told the layoff was part of a "reboot," according to The Times' sources.

While Apple has never publicly acknowledged that it's working on a vehicle, The Wall Street Journal first reported in early 2015 that the company had several hundred employees working on an Apple-branded electric car.

Since then, it has made several high-profile hires and filed patents for technology often used in self-driving cars.

Several unmarked vehicles laden with camera and sensor equipment have also been rumored to be owned by Apple.

Bloomberg recently reported that Apple has shifted its focus from designing a full automobile to building out the technology for a self-driving car, and these new layoffs look like a shift in that direction.

Meanwhile, other tech companies like Google, Tesla, and Uber, as well as car companies like Ford and General Motors, working on their own autonomous-vehicle efforts.

Read next

Jillian was most recently an enterprise technology editor based in San Francisco.  She started at Insider as an intern on the technology desk in 2013 and rose to a senior reporter position, covering Alphabet, Facebook, and ecommerce. After three years at the site, she left to spend time freelance writing abroad, before taking reporting positions at CNBC and then at Forbes, where she covered Alphabet, Silicon Valley culture, and artificial intelligence. She returned to Insider in March 2020 and worked on the enterprise technology desk until August 2021.  Jillian graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a degree in magazine journalism and information management and technology.