Apple is reshuffling its self driving vehicle program by laying off over 200 employees from its ‘Project Titan’. The company is focused more on the software bit in its autonomous vehicle initiative.
Apple has been testing close to 60 odd cars in its program in the San Francisco Bay area. It hopes to run self driving shuttle services by the year 2023 to ferry employees between their bay area campuses.
In August 2018 Apple hired Tesla engineering Vice President Doug Field to lead the Titan team along with Apple veteran Bob Mansfield.
People who were impacted were moved to new sections within the company.
Apple spokesperson in a statement said –
“We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple”
“We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever”