Tech giant Apple may be coming off of a high with the introduction of the iPhone 7, but not everything appears to be on the up-and-up over there at 1 Infinite Loop. According to a report by The New York Times, Apple is reevaluating its plans to develop autonomous driving cars just as some of its rivals – Google and Uber among them – are doubling down on their own efforts to develop their versions of the technology.
The report mentioned that Apple has already laid off “dozens of employees” in the wake of struggles to gain any significant ground on Project Titan, the code name for the company’s autonomous driving initiative. The layoffs are reportedly tied into a reboot of the whole project and come two months after Apple executive Bob Mansfield took the reigns for the project. Apparently, Mansfield pushed to change the whole objective of Project Titan in an attempt to distance itself on designing and producing an actual Apple Car and instead focus on developing technologies that can be used on autonomous driving vehicles, including batteries, sensors, and actual software.
There hasn’t been any confirmation or denial on Apple’s side on whether this shift in focus played a role in the layoffs, but for what it’s worth, the tech company isn’t abandoning its development altogether. For one, it’s already invested heavily in the space as it already has a number of self-driving cars that are in the middle of testing. Second, Apple’s already two years into the project and has assembled an impressive team made up of some of the brightest minds in both battery technology and the automobile industry – at least those who survived the layoff.
It’s highly unlikely that the company will pull the plug entirely on what it has accomplished so far, but it is disconcerting to hear that the company that’s known for its innovations isn’t gaining as much ground on autonomous driving technology.
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