The end of the iCar – Apple scraps its autonomous electric vehicle plans after a decade of work

Apple notified its employees on Tuesday that it was killing off the ‘Apple car,’ a long-awaited project that had been in the pipeline for more than a decade.

The decision to abandon its electric vehicle plan was revealed in an internal memo distributed to about 2,000 company employees. Bloomberg reported.

It said some employees from the team that had been developing the car, known as the Special Projects Group, will be moved to its artificial intelligence (AI) division.

However, not everyone would be saved and some layoffs would be inevitable, the outlet reported.

The cancellation of the project is a shock. Last month, Bloomberg itself reported that the company would launch the car as early as 2028 and scale back its autonomous driving capabilities.

The memo came from Apple COO Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, vice president in charge of the project, Bloomberg reported.

Apple’s electric car has been planned since at least 2014, and rumors about what it would entail have evolved during that period.

Although its initial plans were to create a fully autonomous vehicle, it recently scaled back its plans. Executives were also reportedly concerned that with the $100,000 price target, profit margins would be precariously thin.