Reports indicate that Apple has abandoned Project Titan, its self-driving EV project, and will have workers shift their focus toward artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a bit of a strange announcement considering self-driving EVs require a lot of AI.
The news comes as Apple has received waves of criticism for lagging behind Microsoft and other big tech companies on AI.
Apple has suffered a sizeable slowdown in sales from China even as other emerging markets, like India and South Korea, as well as North America, are at record highs. Apple is under pressure to return to faster growth, and self-driving doesn’t seem to be the best way to do that
Tesla, which has been promising full self-driving and autonomous robo taxis for several years, has made little more than marginal improvements in its driver assist software packages.
At least for now, a fully autonomous self-driving EV seems too big picture for the tech industry.