Apple will purportedly roll out a “scaled down” Apple Car in 2028, according to a Bloomberg article by Mark Gurman.
“Apple Inc. is reaching a make-or-break point in its decade-old effort to build a car, has pivoted to a less ambitious design with the intent of finally bringing an electric vehicle to market,” he writes. “After previously envisioning a truly driverless car, the company is now working on an EV with more limited features, according to people with knowledge of the project.”
Apple had originally hoped to debut a long-in-the-works Apple Car in 2026, but plans and personnel on the project have changed multiple times. If the company can’t debut an electric vehicle with the feature set it wants, executives may “seriously reconsider the project’s existence,” Gurman writes.
The Apple Car project — dubbed (at least at onetime) Project: Titan — has had a tumultuous history. For example, in July 2021 it was announced that Apple Vice President of Technology Kevin Lynch would take a role in leading the development of the Apple Car. This happened after Doug Field, who had headed the project, left Apple for Ford.
Lynch joined Apple in 2013 after working as the chief technology officer of Adobe Systems. He has been responsible for, among other things, developing the Apple Watch software.
In 2016, Apple convinced Bob Mansfield, former Senior Vice President of Technologies, to come out of retirement to run Project Titan. However, he retired again in 2020 with (at that point) John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, assuming command of Project Titan.
