- Apple reportedly developed a powerful chip equivalent to four M2 Ultras combined for its electric car project.
- The development of this new chip was "nearly finished".
- Apple has officially cancelled its decade-long, multi-billion-dollar electric car project.
Even after a decade of work and billions of dollars spent, the electric car project “Titan” never came into existence. The Cupertino tech giant scrapped its most ambitious project in history. Apple had some high ambitions for its electric car, including an advanced fully autonomous driving system. To turn those dreams into reality, Apple reportedly developed a powerful chip equivalent to four M2 Ultras combined.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said that the Apple Silicon team was “heavily involved” in the Apple Car project before it was called off. He further revealed that the company was working day and night to create the “AI brain” of the car, which was supposed to be powered by a custom Apple Silicon chip.
If the project saw daylight, it would be powered by a new chip that’s equivalent to the power of four M2 Ultras, which is Apple’s most powerful processor yet. Talking about a single M2 Ultra chip, it’s made of up to 134 billion transistors and features a 24-core CPU, a 76-core GPU, and a specialized 32-core Neural Engine. Currently, only the latest Mac Studio and Mac Pro boast the M2 Ultra powers.
Besides those powerful capabilities, what’s interesting is the fact that Apple “nearly finished” the development of this new chip, before the project was canceled. Some of the engineers working on the car project were moved to Apple’s Generative AI team, Apple is likely to reuse this new chip for future projects. Right now, we don’t have any concrete idea about Apple’s upcoming plans.
A car project has been in Apple’s pipeline since 2014. It feels sad to see that even after working for 10 long years, Apple’s electric car project didn’t see a beginning. Under the direction of Tim Cook, the company experimented with several ideas and prototypes in the last 10 years. In fact, there were reports that Apple approached Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, and McLaren about building a car together.
Initially, Apple executives wanted to build a fully autonomous car, and it involved several challenges that were quite hard to overcome. Later on, the company decided to reinstate the project with a less aggressive and ambitious approach. Worse luck, building a car didn’t seem to be Apple’s cup of tea. After trying everything, Apple gave up on its car ambitions after spending $1 billion annually.
The now-cancelled Project Titan feels like a setback for Apple. The giant has high hopes to diversify its revenue streams beyond iPhones and Macs. We would love to see what Apple might offer with its luxurious bubble powered by a high-end Apple Silicon processor. Sadly, Apple’s futuristic vision for the automobile industry won’t be realized in the near future.
