Apple has changed its strategy for developing electric cars, aiming to develop a more basic electric car with limited features to compete with Tesla's existing models. The company had previously planned to launch a fully autonomous car, but has now opted for a less ambitious design. The new plan for the car is to use an L2+ level system, offering limited autonomous driving features such as lane centering and adaptive cruise control.
This is a big departure from previous plans, which included Level 4 autonomous driving, allowing cars to drive themselves in specific situations, such as local self-driving taxis.
Apple initially aimed to release products with advanced self-driving features in 2026, but has now changed course to focus on more basic driver-assistance features.
According to Bloomberg, the latest adjustments affect the release schedule, which will see the release as early as 2028, about two years later than previous predictions.
Since 2014, Apple’s car projects, code-named Titan and T172, have had twists and turns. The program has endured leadership changes, strategic changes, hiring freezes, layoffs and delays.
Within the company, the shift was seen as a critical moment when Apple had to deliver products with lowered expectations or reconsider the project's existence. The company has started discussions with potential European manufacturing partners to implement the new strategy and plans to launch an upgraded system supporting Level 4 autonomous driving after the initial launch.
After lengthy discussions between Apple’s board of directors, project leader Kevin Lynch and CEO Tim Cook, the decision was made to reduce the size of the project. The car project represents a major investment for Apple, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on research and development, including powertrains, self-driving software and hardware, and vehicle components.
This prediction coincides with Ming-Chi Kuo's recent prediction in late September if the project is delayed again. According to the analyst, he has "completely lost faith" in the project and doubts "whether an Apple Car can be put into mass production within the next few years."
After Ming-Chi Kuo predicted in March that the Apple Car team would be disbanded, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives asserted that the product's arrival was "a matter of when, not if," which he predicted would come out in 2026.
For a decade, the Apple car project always seemed to be three years away but inevitable at the same time, making it unclear who was right about the product.