A Last Chance for Apple’s Electric Car?

We thought the Apple Car project was dead and buried, but now a rumor suggests a rapprochement between the Apple brand and Rivian.

Apple’s executives informed the teams working on the electric car project, internally called Project Titan, in February that hundreds of employees would be transferred to divisions working on artificial intelligence.

This shift followed what were described internally as “tumultuous” meetings between the head of the Apple Car project, Kevin Lynch, the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, and Apple’s board of directors. The stakes were immense as it was one of the company’s most expensive projects, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the past decade. Admittedly, it hasn’t been very successful, as we haven’t even seen a small prototype to hold us over.

After mockingly dismissing Apple’s ambitions, Tesla CEO Elon Musk seemed to welcome the news favorably, sharing a post on social media about this decision with two rather pointed emojis: farewell and a last cigarette, which could symbolically represent that of a condemned person…

It seemed that the Apple brand was struggling to develop autonomous driving technology, and that the slowdown in the electric market had dampened its sales forecasts. But ultimately, this might be a case of stepping back to make a stronger leap forward.

The audacious success of major rival Xiaomi, which sells its SU7 like hotcakes must have annoyed more than a few in Cupertino, Apple’s historic headquarters. If a large-scale industrial project is still not on the agenda, why not consider a small collaboration? And this would reportedly be with a booming manufacturer, Rivian. The latter benefits from a long-term partnership with Amazon for the development of a 100% electric delivery van fleet and recently unveiled 2 new very appealing models, the R2 and R3. So a little bodywork, some embedded technology made by Apple, and an apple on the rear tailgate, and it’s all set. And why not?