Despite spending billions of dollars on the project in the past 10 years, Apple has scrapped efforts to build its own self-driving electric car.
Social media users have been mercilessly mocking the tech giant, which is reportedly set to fire employees who worked on the ambitious scheme.
Taking to X, one joked that Apple cancelled the car ‘after realizing it would require windows’, in a nod to the software from rival tech firm Microsoft.
Another user said that the ‘charging solution proved a bit inconvenient’ with a shot of an upside-down car with a charger plugged into it.
Yet another posted an image of the ‘original Apple car’ – driven by Lowly Worm the fictional earthworm from the classic 1960s children’s books.
One X user said: ‘Apple has cancelled plans to make a car after realizing it would require windows’
‘Good thing we still have the original Apple car!’ One user posted a shot of Lowly Worm from the much-loved children’s books by Richard Scarry
Elon Musk, owner of rival firm Tesla, also addressed the news on X with two emojis – one of a saluting face and another of a lit cigarette.
Apple has not disclosed how much it spent on the secretive project – known internally as ‘Project Titan’ – although CNBC said it pumped around $30 billion (£23 billion) into it last year alone.
MailOnline has contacted Apple for comment.
The company notified employees in an internal memo on Tuesday that the Apple car project would be ending, which largely came as a shock to the near-2,000 employees working on it.
Many employees on the team that had been developing the car will be moved to its artificial intelligence (AI) division.
However, not everybody will be saved and some layoffs will be inevitable, Bloomberg reported.
It comes just a month after the site reported Apple would launch the car as early as 2028, albeit with greatly reduced self-driving abilities than originally planned, and not long after the firm was still filing car-related patents.
As for why it has been cancelled, an expert claims the landscape has changed in the 10 years since ‘Project Titan’ was launched, with more of a focus on AI than autonomous cars.
Another user joked that the ‘charging solution proved a bit inconvenient’ with a shot of an upside-down car with a phone charger plugged into it
Elon Musk, owner of rival firm Tesla, also addressed the news on X with two emojis – a saluting face and a lit cigarette
READ MORE: Here’s what the Apple Car could have looked like
Apple Car has been hotly anticipated for years, with several design firms creating artistic renderings of what it could look like
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‘On one hand this is a modest disappointment, as the view within with roughly 2,000 employees on this initiative [was] that an Apple Car was still on the medium-term horizon,’ said Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush.
‘But the laser focus within Apple is ramping up and executing a broad AI strategy within the Apple ecosystem, as it appears the vast majority of these engineers and developers will now focus their efforts on AI.’
Robert Walden, a mechanic, car enthusiast, and founder of Vehicle Freak, said Apple ‘took on way more than they bargained for trying to build a car from scratch’.
‘For Apple, cars are a whole new ballgame outside their comfort zone,’ he told MailOnline.
‘From what I can see, Apple just didn’t have a clear roadmap… it’s no surprise they hit roadblocks.’
Apple executives were reportedly concerned that at the target price of $100,000 profit margins would be precariously slim.
The tech company started working on a car in about 2014 and rumors around what it would look like have since furiously circulated.
Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that Apple was working on building a car in a brief interview with Bloomberg in 2017, although he said his firm is ‘focusing on autonomous systems’ more than a physical vehicle.
‘We sort of see it as the mother all AI projects,’ Cook said in the interview. ‘It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.’
Back in 2015, Apple board member Mickey Drexler told Business Insider that Steve Jobs considered building a car before he died in 2011.
A 2022 Apple patent includes sketches of a passenger in the Apple Car. Chairs in the car would move about to match the visuals, the patent suggested
Apple Car has been hotly anticipated for years, so already several design firms have created artistic renderings of what it could look like
Though its initial plans were to create a fully autonomous electric vehicle, it recently pared this back to an electric vehicle with semi-autonomous features.
Reuters reported in 2020 that Apple was considering releasing a vehicle as soon as 2024 or 2025, but progress was greatly stalled when the Covid pandemic disrupted the global automotive industry.
Apple never even released promo images of the vehicle, although several design firms created artistic renderings of what it could look like.
In 2022, Devanga Borah, a mechanical engineer at Tezpur University in India, revealed renderings of a bizarre white car consisting of a spherical pod that swivels around 360-degrees on four wheels.
Reminiscent of Apple’s eMac computer from 2002, the vehicle is painted in glossy white and features the Apple logo between the front and back sets of wheels.
UK car leasing firm Vanarama also created images of a sleek grey vehicle with sharp angles and a glowing Apple logo on the radiator grille.
Vanarama has created images of a sleek grey vehicle with sharp angles and a glowing Apple logo on the radiator grille
As imagined by Vanarama’s artists, the sleek vehicle’s interior sports a sweeping, customisable, tactile touchscreen interface in place of a conventional dashboard
In 2016, ConceptsiPhone created a video of a possible Apple Car prototype, featuring a wide dashboard display, connectivity to other Apple devices, and the company’s trademark minimalist design.
Swinburne University future urban mobility professor Hussein Dia said the news shows creating self-driving vehicles is a much more difficult challenge than even the biggest tech companies had estimated.
‘We will need a substantial breakthrough in artificial intelligence to get to level five [automation], he told AAP.
‘The industry is proving it is not as easy as they thought.’
Level five automation would represent full self-driving in a vehicle, Prof Dia said, while the most advanced Tesla vehicles currently featured level two automation.
