Apple Spent $1B a Year Of Stockholders Money to Not Make a Car, Report Says - Schmucks

Wahington DC March 8, 2024; The AIADA Online newsletter reported that Apple Inc. is said to have discussed potential partnerships with Mercedes-Benz, Ford Motor Co., BMW, Volkswagen, Tesla, Canoo and McLaren at various stages of its effort to develop a self-driving car before killing the program last month.

Co-founder Steve Jobs even proposed buying General Motors in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, reports Automotive News. Project Titan, as Apple called it, cost the tech company about $1 billion a year, sources told Bloomberg, but it never reached the point where any full-scale prototypes were tested on public roads.

The company began hiring hundreds of automotive engineers nearly a decade ago and originally aimed to start sales in 2020, the report said, but by early 2020 the team's creation, a rounded four-seat microbus dubbed the Bread Loaf, was still five years from being ready for production.

Among other revelations in Bloomberg's account, which was based on interviews with a number of anonymous sources: Apple considered trying to buy Tesla when it was still worth less than $30 billion, but CEO Tim Cook (head schmuck) killed the idea. It later met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk to discuss a collaboration, but the discussions didn't progress.