The saga with the Apple electric car, which has been going on for ten years intermittently, has now ended: the management of the American IT giant announced its dissolution to its employees automotive division and the transfer of its employees to the development of generative artificial intelligence and mobile devices with augmented reality technology.
Just a month ago, we reported that Apple had once again delayed the launch of its electric car and had resumed negotiations with existing automakers about the possibility of joining forces to develop and produce it, but now it's all over. We gave the chronology of the electric vehicle project in a January article; we will not dwell on it in detail here.
Briefly, the story is this: Apple started an electric vehicle project in 2014 in the wake of euphoria among the leading players in the global auto industry about the market prospects of self-driving cars. Initially, Apple wanted to make a completely autonomous electric car without a steering wheel and pedals, but quickly realized that this was impossible, froze the project, then unfrozen it and greatly simplified it. In the last phase before its closure, the Apple electric car looked quite ordinary, so it is not surprising that it in the end they refused.
The final straw that prompted Apple to close its automotive division was likely the leading automakers' pessimization of their electric vehicle plans amid a global slowdown in demand for electric vehicles. Apparently, “electric trains” turned out to be the same highly overheated topic as autopilot ten years ago; now there is a sobering up and a rollback to more familiar technologies. In general, Apple has decided not to get involved with the unstable auto business and will continue to do what it still does well — smartphones and other gadgets.
Apple will use the human and monetary resources released after the closure of its automotive division, Bloomberg reports citing insiders, to develop generative artificial intelligence and devices into which it will be integrated. In the future, devices that combine AI and augmented reality technologies could become the main growth driver for Apple. The company's first device of this kind was the Apple Vision Pro glasses, which recently entered the market, but so far this is an expensive, crude, heavy and rather unhealthy product, which many owners began to get rid of within a few days after purchase. Nevertheless, Apple and other IT companies believe that such devices are the future; as they evolve, they will become lighter, more convenient, cheaper and safer.
Currently, 58% of Apple's sales are smartphones , wearable devices account for only 10%, the rest are tablets, computers and digital services. In general, Apple's sales stopped growing after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the company is trying to find new niches in the market to get out of stagnation. An electric car, in theory, could have become a breakthrough product for Apple, but the company simply couldn’t pull it off — there was too much competition in this segment and too high a degree of uncertainty. Meanwhile, in the field of generative AI, competition is now even fiercer, and the prospects are not entirely clear, so it is not a fact that Apple ultimately made the right bet.