Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman

Apple CEO Tim Cook
For the last decade, many Apple employees working on the company’s secretive “Project Titan” electric vehicle project called it “The Titanic Disaster.” (We’d have gone with “Project Titanic.”) Amidst the layoffs, constant staffing and goal changes, and a general stench of failure permeating the effort, they knew the project was doomed to fail, The New York Times reported late last month. Bloomberg News‘ Mark Gurman calls the Apple Car cancelation “a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come.”
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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Around 2014, Apple Inc. had a plan that would diversify revenue and chart a future beyond the iPhone in one full swoop: an electric vehicle.
But as I detailed this past week in a Bloomberg Businessweek feature about Apple’s car efforts, the project was almost immediately hobbled by indecision and disagreement, technological challenges, and the cold hard realities of the automotive sector.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and other executives disagreed on what strategy to pursue, including whether to build a car at all, but also on minutia — like the individual gizmos in the car interior. A major point of contention was what level of autonomy to give the car. The scale ranges from 0 to 5, and Apple’s goals shifted several times throughout the project. At the same time, prospects for the overall EV market dimmed.
Against that backdrop, scrapping Apple’s car project wasn’t a mistake, especially since it frees up resources to focus on new generative AI features. But it’s still a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come.
Without a car on the horizon, there’s no shiny new thing for Apple investors, employees and customers to get excited about — at least not at the scale of an EV. There isn’t another category that could increase Apple revenue the way a car can.

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MacDailyNews Take: This is not the only project inside Apple that’s wracked with indecision, disagreement, and waste. This is not an anomaly, it’s closer to the norm.
What if a major company had a CEO who was out of his depth, but who could look wildly successful for a decade simply by building out the company’s retail chain that his predecessor devised and iterating/not screwing up products that, again, his predecessor devised?
What would happen when real vision was finally required, but the company was hamstrung with an indecisive, myopic CEO with a seemingly unending list of misplaced priorities?
A fish rots from the head down.
See also:
• Apple CEO Tim Cook faces significant employee unrest – September 20, 2021
• New book: ‘After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul’ – February 1, 2022
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
• Microsoft, not Tim Cook’s Apple, is now the most valuable company ever – February 9, 2024
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Apple’s biggest risk: Not innovating like it used to under Steve Jobs – February 14, 2024
• How an indecisive Tim Cook blew $1 billion a year on a vehicle Apple never built – March 6, 2024
• Nvidia primed to overtake Apple as world’s second-most-valuable company – March 8, 2024
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The post Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman appeared first on MacDailyNews.