Project Titan
Latest
Engadget Podcast: Farewell, Apple Car
We chat about Engadget's editorial changes and a report about the Apple Car project shutting down.
The Apple Car never felt real
The idea of Apple making a car never stood up to logic, argues Daniel Cooper.
The Apple Car project is reportedly dead
A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple has officially canceled the project, breaking the news to nearly 2,000 employees who had been working on it on Tuesday.
The Apple car apparently still exists, could debut in 2028 with reduced autonomy
Apple has reportedly scaled back its automotive aspirations, at least for now. The company’s decade-old vehicle project has reportedly pivoted from planning a fully self-driving car to an EV like Tesla’s.
‘Overwatch 2’ director explains why hero missions were canceled
When Blizzard announced earlier this week that it had canceled Overwatch 2’s hero missions, a central part of its player vs. environment (PvE) story mode, fans were none too pleased. So director Aaron Keller published a blog post today to ease the concerns and offer more transparency about the development team’s “incredibly difficult decision.”
Apple's rumored electric car may not be fully self-driving after all
Apple has reportedly scaled back its EV plans, and the car will no longer be fully self-driving upon its 2026 debut.
Apple reportedly hired a longtime Ford executive for its car project
Desi Ujkashevic worked on vehicle safety, regulatory issues and much more at the automaker.
Apple reportedly aims to debut a fully self-driving car in 2025
Apple is reportedly focusing its EV efforts on a fully self-driving car, with hopes of releasing it by 2025.
Apple hires former BMW and Faraday Future exec to EV team
Apple has hired former BMW executive Ulrich Kranz to join its automotive team.
Apple reportedly also spoke to Nissan about building a self-driving EV
Apple reportedly held talks with Nissan about its self-driving EV project.
Hyundai and Kia are no longer in talks with Apple over an autonomous EV
After grabbing headlines over a potential deal, Hyundai and Kia say they're not currently talking to Apple about an autonomous EV.
CNBC: Apple, Hyundai deal to build an autonomous Apple Car is 'close'
Rumors suggest a Hyundai/Kia-built self-driving'Apple Car' could roll out of a Georgia plant by 2024.
Apple shuffles hardware execs to make room for a mysterious new project
Apple hardware engineering SVP Dan Riccio will move over to a new project, while still reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook.
Hyundai and Apple will reportedly sign an electric car deal by March
Hyundai and Apple reportedly plan to sign a deal for self-driving electric cars by March, and production could start by 2024 at Kia's Georgia plant.
Hyundai confirms discussions about building a car with Apple
Hyundai issued a statement saying Apple is in talks with multiple automakers about working on a car together.
Apple once envisioned retractable bumpers for its self-driving cars
Apple once dreamed of self-driving cars with retractable bumpers. In 2015, the company filed a patent for "extendable bumpers" with the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patent was published this morning, but even if Apple were once serious about adding inflatable bumpers to its vehicles, the company has since pivoted and scaled back its Project Titan self-driving vehicle efforts.
Apple confirms it acquired a self-driving car startup
The latest self-driving firm to be consolidated is Drive.ai. The startup has been working on AI tech for autonomous vehicles for a few years, but found itself low on cash in an increasingly competitive market. Now, just as the San Francisco Chronicle reports that it filed with regulators about shutting down, Apple acquired it for an undisclosed amount. However, the paper reports it's still laying off 90 employees, while some others including dozens of engineers and product designers, according to Axios, are joining Apple. We still don't have a lot of information about Apple's Project Titan efforts that have seemingly changed directions more than once. Still, snapping up the pieces of a company that already had self-driving cars on the streets should bolster whatever Apple is working on.
Apple seeks 'revolutionary' sensors for its self-driving car project
Apple isn't out of the self-driving car game because of its recent layoffs -- far from it, if you believe reports. Reuters sources claim that Apple has talked with "at least" four possible suppliers as it looks for a "revolutionary" lidar sensor design. Where existing autonomous vehicles tend to have bulky, expensive sensor packs that use mechanical parts to scan the road, Apple wants lidar that could fit into the aesthetics of a car while scanning "hundreds of meters" ahead and costing hundreds of dollars, not tens of thousands.
Apple recruits Tesla's head of electric powertrains
Just because Apple scaled back its self-driving car team doesn't mean it's out of the game. If anything, it made a potentially significant hire. The company has hired Michael Schwekutsch, the Tesla VP overseeing electric powertrains, as a Senior Director of Engineering at the Special Project Group (the division that includes driverless vehicles). There's no mention of what he's doing, to no one's surprise, but his experience speaks volumes.
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2014
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about how Vanguard's early stumbles foreshadowed the changing MMORPG industry. In January 2007, when Vanguard lurched its way to launch, the genre was barely a decade old; it was booming, and it had never suffered hardship on a massive scale. In the west, we'd seen only three "major" MMOs sunset (Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond, and Asheron's Call 2), and only one MMO, Anarchy Online, had "gone F2P," though we hadn't yet thought to call it yet because it was such a rare and new thing. In fact, it wasn't until 2008's first big wave of AAA, post-World of Warcraft MMOs launched and mostly flopped that MMORPG players gave much thought to the future of the genre and how WoW had reshaped (and possibly broken) it. Maybe not even then. Here in 2015, sunsets are commonplace, and the vast majority of modern MMOs have adopted some sort of subscriptionless model. Last year, we lost more than a dozen MMOs, including Vanguard itself, all of them wiped from the face of the earth (at least until someone decides to resurrect them), and several more under development were canceled, leading to concern among industry watchers like those of us who pen for Massively. Let's try to get some perspective and revisit the MMOs we lost in 2014.
