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.”
The Treasury Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are investigating the reported decision by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to allow the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access government payment systems.
The investigations were announced in a Friday (Feb. 14) press release issued by the Democratic membership of the Senate Banking Committee, which included links to letters from the agencies sent in response to a request for an investigation from Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
In one letter, whose signer was redacted, the GAO said: “GAO accepts your request as work that is within the scope of its authority. As we discussed with your staff, given the broad congressional interest of this request, we are accepting this work with the understanding that any Member of Congress can sign on to the work as a co-requester. We plan to conduct one body of audit work and issue multiple reports, if needed.”
In the other letter included with the press release, Treasury Department Deputy Inspector General Loren J. Sciurba wrote that the Office of the Inspector General began an audit related to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems on Feb. 6.
The audit aims to determine the adequacy of controls in place for access to the payment system and for ensuring payments are made in accordance with laws, and to follow up on any allegations of improper or fraudulent payments made by the Fiscal Service, Sciurba said in the letter.
“Given the breadth of this effort, the audit will likely not be completed until August; however, we recognize the danger that improper access or inadequate controls can pose to the integrity of sensitive payment systems,” Sciurba wrote. “As such, if critical issues come to light before that time, we will issue interim updates and reports.”
It was reported Feb. 2 that Bessent gave DOGE access to the federal payment system that disburses money on behalf of the federal government. This access provides DOGE with a tool that can be used to monitor and limit government spending.
The members of the DOGE team who were given access to the system were made Treasury employees, passed government background checks and obtained security clearances. Treasury Department attorneys approved the granting of access.