Apple confirms layoff of 190 people from self-driving car project

Apple on Wednesday confirmed plans to lay off 190 people from its self-driving car project, known as Project Titan, namely from facilities in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, Calif.

Most of the impacted workers are engineers, according to a filing with the California Employment Development Department seen by the San Francisco Chronicle and subsequently verified by Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr. That includes 38 engineering program managers, 33 hardware engineers, 31 product design engineers, and 22 software engineers.

The layoffs will take effect on Apr. 16, and are said to affect eight office and industrial properties first uncovered by AppleInsider in 2015: 3000 Kifer Road, 3689 Kifer Road, 5301 Patrick Henry Drive, 2945 San Ysidro Way, and 2975 San Ysidro Way in Santa Clara, and 1150 Kifer Road, 1170 Kifer Road and 195 N. Wolfe Road in Sunnyvale. The two towns are connected and not far from Apple Park in Cupertino.

Over 200 people were dismissed in January this year. At least some of those people were moved to other parts of Apple — it's not clear if the same triage is being repeated.

Even less certain is what the layoffs could mean for Project Titan. While the company has been testing on California roads, its ultimate goals for the initiative are nebulous. While it could be developing a full-fledged vehicle, Apple might also be working on a platform for third parties.

Most recently a German report claimed that Apple might be designing an electric van rather than a sedan or compact. In any case, nothing is expected to go on sale until at least 2023.

40 Comments

JinTech 1054 comments · 9 Years

About 5 years ago

Well, I guess that's that.

Fatman 513 comments · 8 Years

I guess that will save about $30million/yr in salaries. Hire some more people to the Siri team to finally catch up with Amazon/Google.

marquismark 70 comments · 16 Years

From reading the source article from the SF Chronicle, it seems this is the same layoff we heard about last month, only now officially submitted to the state. This AI article makes it sound like it's an additional set of layoffs.

"The layoffs were disclosed, along with new details, in a letter this month to the California Employment Development Department. CNBC reported last month that layoffs were occurring in the self-driving car division, known as Project Titan. Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, confirmed that the letter to the state referenced the same layoffs."

anantksundaram 20390 comments · 18 Years

At this point, one can't be faulted for believing that this project seems to have all the markers of -- and same fate as -- the AppleTV and a TV by Apple...

seanismorris 1624 comments · 8 Years

Project Titan was a “me too” project.

Everyone is working on the self driving car, but the technology isn’t there yet. Apple isn’t really in the business of inventing the hardware...

If Apple was one of the top companies in self driving, that would be different. But with companies like GM (automakers) doing so much better (than Apple) it’s kind of a waste of resources.

I would like to see what AR assisted driving would look like, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple shifted resources in that direction. It would be very handy if Apple could project where the lanes are in poor weather. I remember there was talk of implanting markers in the roads years ago...