(TheIndependentStar.com) – After ten years of work done in secret, Apple has decided to stop its plans to make an electric vehicle (EV) that would compete with Tesla.
Just last month, the company shared its goal to launch its first EV in 2028.
Breitbart News reported today that Apple will not go forward with making the EV, often called the “iCar” after the company’s well-known way of naming products. This decision comes shortly after Apple announced a 2028 release date for the vehicle.
Since 2014, there have been reports of Apple hiring car engineers and experts from big car brands. This was part of a big but quiet move to enter the electric vehicle market. Although Apple never made any public statements about this project, its teams spent years working on software for self-driving cars and testing Apple car prototypes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Apple’s “Special Projects Group,” which at one point had thousands of workers, was behind this effort. However, the project didn’t move forward in a company that is more focused on consumer electronics and software. On Tuesday, Apple said it would stop the electric car team’s work and move some engineers to different areas of the company. This marks the end of almost a decade of effort.
Stopping the car project shows the big challenges Apple faced trying to get into making cars on a large scale. Making electric cars would need big investments in factories and equipment, very different from how Apple makes iPhones and other devices. It was also not clear how Apple would manage to make a car in large quantities, given that it depends on partners like Foxconn to make its devices.
Even though Apple is ending its car project, it will keep working on tech related to cars. Its CarPlay software, which lets iPhones connect with car systems, is now in 80 percent of new cars. Apple might also use what it learned from testing self-driving cars in future transportation projects.
