Apple Car Project Backtracks Before Moving Forward

Sometimes, Apple’s mania for secrecy can be frustrating. We have been hearing rumors about it’s super-secret electric car program for years now. Supposedly, it has hired the best and brightest engineers from Tesla and other carmakers to work on the car. We hear reports that the team has expanded to over 1,000 employees. But how far have they gotten?

Earlier this year, project leader Steven Zadesky suddenly was no longer with the company. Officially, he left for “personal reasons.” Unofficially, that phrase is often code in the business world for someone who was given a generous severance package and told to clean out his office. Apple brought in Bob Mansfield, a longtime member of Apple senior management who had a special relationship with Steve Jobs.

Mansfield has been on the job for about a month now. The New York Times reports that he has laid off several dozen people and that Project Titan is undergoing a complete reboot, whatever that means. The most likely interpretation is that Apple has no idea what its goal is for Project Titan. As Forrest Gump so famously said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’re not likely to end up there.”

According to The Cult Of Mac, Mansfield is pulling back on the idea of making an electric car to concentrate on the software that will empower autonomous cars. Presumably, Apple could sell that system to carmakers that don’t have the resources to develop their own self-driving technology. Not quite the breakthrough the iPhone was, but better than nothing. Apple is seeing a decline in iPhone sales and desperately needs some blockbuster new products to keep its edge in the digital world.

Whatever Apple expects Project Titan to lead to, insiders now think it won’t see the light of day before 2021. The world of automobiles will be well into the electric car revolution by then. It seems ridiculous that the company with the largest stockpile of free cash in the world can’t get a handle on how to participate in that revolution, but as Elon Musk said after the Tesla Model X finally went into production two years late, building automobiles is really hard.

There have been reports from inside Apple that the seasoned production people Apple hired from other companies were scandalized by how clueless the eggheads who only write code were. They apparently have no idea what it takes to actually build an automobile. Some are said to have quit in disgust, convinced that Apple does not have the faintest idea how to turn Project Titan into a reality.

Of course, nobody knows for sure what is going on inside the company, which is more tight lipped than the NSA. But it looks for all the world like Project Titan is a quagmire that threatens to eat up piles of cash for no apparent gain. Steve Jobs would be embarrassed by this debacle.

Graphic by Motor1 via Cult of Mac

What Is Happening To The Apple Car Project?

Just last month, Apple registered three new urls: apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto. Earlier this month, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, said it is an “open secret” that Apple is working on an electric car. “It’s pretty hard to hide something when you hire over 1,000 engineers to do it,” Musk said. Everybody and his brother knows the effort is code named “Project Titan.”

In August, Apple poached top software engineer Jamie Carlson from Tesla, where he was intimately involved in developing Tesla autonomous driving Autopilot program. In September, word leaked that the big bosses at Apple had approved a request to triple the size of the Project Titan team. Steve Zadesky, who previously worked as an engineer at Ford, was placed in charge of the expansion.

But now, word has leaked that Zadesky has suddenly left the company for “personal reasons,” according to Newsweek. A report by AppleInsider dated January 25 claims that Apple’s head of design, Jony Ive, has placed a hold on hiring for Project Titan. Insiders report Ive has “expressed his displeasure” with the way the Project Titan process is going.

A report in The Wall Street Journal dated January 22 suggests the project has run up against a number of challenges. Team members are said to be unhappy with the lack of “clear goals for the project.” They also say management is insisting on performance deadlines that are unrealistic. It is thought that 2019 is the target date for introducing an Apple Car, but that may just be the date when final design approval is expected.

Apple has no car manufacturing experience and no car factory. Even the irrepressible Elon Musk seems to have been chastened by how hard it is to actually build automobiles. Back in September, AppleInsider speculated that Apple had approached BMW about partnering to build its car. Apple apparently was impressed with the innovative BMW i3 electric car and thought it might make a suitable platform for its own vehicles. BMW seems to have been less interested than Apple was, however.

Have the wheels come off the Apple Car project? The company is notoriously secretive about its future plans, but if the rumors are reliable, Project Titan seems to be in serious trouble.

Photo credit: Silvery/Creative Commons via Newsweek