As Apple's sales regarding its flagship product falter, the company is slowing expanding its reach and is looking to enter the automobile industry. Though the company has been keeping quiet about the project, numerous reports have surfaced in recent years that it is indeed trying to permeate the market.
However, the project - codenamed Titan - is undergoing another setback at the moment as reports are coming in that Apple laid off dozens of people involved in the car's development. The job-cut is apparently a part of a reboot that the project is going through, according to Times.
icar,Project Titan in 2020. #projecttitan #icar #appleprojecttitan
A photo posted by Apple (@appleidorder) on Jul 24, 2015 at 9:05am PDT
When Bob Mansfield took over the project last July, the accomplished Apple veteran shifted the team's focus from design and automobile production to the vehicle's tech development.
But this isn't to say that design has been totally abandoned. It's just that Mansfield seems to emphasize on tech so that should the initiative finally comes into fruition Apple can boast a feature that's innovative and unique only to the company's vehicle.
This makes sense since today's electronic cars don't rely on internal combustion engines, but more on tech ubiquitous in the consumer electronic world like batteries, sensors, and software.
Unlike Steve Zadesky who answers to hardware chief Dan Riccio, Mansfield is reporting directly to Timothy Cook, chief executive of Apple. Mansfield's division comprises of three cores: a software team led by John Write; a sensors group helmed by Benjamin Lyon; and a hardware engineer unit under D.J. Novotney.
It can be remembered that Apple started looking seriously into the auto market two years ago, expanding the initiative quickly and pulling Apple staff members from different divisions. 18 months later and the project had 1,000 or so employees working on the project.
Apple has also brought in various experts in battery tech, machine vision, and veterans from the automobile industry targeting a release date in 2020. That goal has been bombarded by a lot of obstacles during the years - multiple departures, technical delays, and confusion with regards to the project's direction - with the "reboot" being the most recent.
Given that other autonomous car companies are working on advanced vehicle tech themselves, it's likely that Apple still has a long way to go in realizing this ambitious reach. How long that will take remains uncertain.
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