Apple Lays Off Over 200 Staff Members from Project Titan

US tech firm Apple Inc. has dismissed more than 200 employees this week from its autonomous vehicle team, Project Titan, as part of what it is being described internally as a restructuring effort under new leadership of the program, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Spokesperson for Apple confirmed the lay-offs and stated that as the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple.

Last year, the iPhone maker put Apple veteran and Tesla Inc. Engineering Vice President, Doug Field, in charge of the Titan team along with Bob Mansfield.

Other employees affected by the restructuring of Project Titan will remain at Apple, although they will be reassigned to different parts of the company.

The Cupertino-based firm previously cut back on the Project Titan initiative in 2016, when hundreds of team members were dismissed. The move was seen internally as a reboot of the self-driving vehicle project.

Shares of Apple rose 0.4 percent to $154.65 in pre-market trade on Thursday.

Fully Autonomous Vehicles on Public Roads Still Years Away

Executives of Apple have stayed tight-lipped in recent months about the company’s automobile prospects, which seemed to have changed from the initial rumored vehicle to a focus on software.

Moreover, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has noted health-related features as the top priority for the firm, saying Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind will be about health. Conversely, employment rate within the company for health-related careers have grown 400 percent over the past couple of years.       

Prior to the layoffs in 2016, reports suggested that the smartphone maker plans to introduce a branded electric car by 2020, but a fully operational vehicle is not expected to hit public roads until 2023 at the earliest as Apple continues to work on autonomous vehicle subsystems.  

Fully self-driving cars are still at trial phase, even for big players in the field like Waymo LLC, General Motors Co.’s Cruise Automation, and Tesla.

Venture investors and strategic investors from the traditional automotive industry have spent billions into start-ups building self-driving vehicles such as Zoox, Pony.ai, Aurora Innovation Inc., May Mobility Inc., Embark, and others.  

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