Apple Officially Ends Driverless Car Project With Permit Cancellation

Months after announcing it was canceling its self-driving car, Apple has made it official.

According to a recent report by the website macReports, the tech giant contacted the California Department of Motor Vehicles last month to cancel its Autonomous Vehicles Program Manufacturer’s Testing Permit, which had been active until April 30 of next year.

Apple announced in February that it was sunsetting what was known as Project Titan, a 10-year-old effort that saw the company spend billions to create a fully autonomous electric vehicle (EV) product featuring luxury interiors and voice-guided driver experiences. 

“Facing ongoing setbacks, the company’s most recent approach to salvage its EV division was pushing back the car’s eventual launch to 2028 and reducing the self-driving benchmark from Level 4 to Level 2+ technology, turning the car into more of a standard EV than a truly autonomous machine,” PYMNTS wrote at the time. “But even with those concessions, it was not to be.”

In other autonomous vehicle news, last week saw the debut of Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi, which CEO Elon Musk had initially predicted would arrive in 2020.

Its rollout was part of Musk’s larger plan for the future of autonomy, at an event held along the fake streets of Warner Brothers’ lot in Los Angeles.

“And the Hollywood setting matched the Hollywood-style hyperbole of the event, which was light on details and launch timelines while heavy on promises that included self-driving cars, cybervans and cybercabs, as well as fully autonomous bipedal ‘Optimus’ robots,” PYMNTS wrote.

“The future will look like the future,” said Musk, adding, “autonomy will create the world we want.”

Among the details shared at Thursday’s “We, Robot” event was a pledge that Tesla would begin building the fully autonomous Cybercab by 2026 or 2027, and sell it for a price of under $30,000, as well as the debut of a sister-vehicle robovan capable of transporting as many as 20 people.

These efforts are happening at a time when — per PYMNTS Intelligence data — 75% of car companies plan to integrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology into their operations.

“I believe in our lifetime, not just automobiles, but every piece of moving machinery on the face of the earth will be automated,” Anna Brunelle, CFO at May Mobility, said in an interview here in February. “And the smart infrastructure that oversees it and supports it will also be automated.”