Apple has recently laid off over 700 individuals working at the electric vehicle site, according to the latest WARN report filed by the Employment Development Department of California.
The majority of those affected were employees at Apple’s offices in Santa Clara, with 371 of them originating from the location primarily associated with the company’s now-defunct electric vehicle project.
Under California law, companies are mandated to submit a report to the EDD for each impacted location under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program.
The layoffs impacted eight Apple facilities in Santa Clara, including the main office dedicated to the car project. However, one of these sites was focused on Apple’s in-house MicroLED display initiative, which reportedly faced termination in March due to financial constraints and technical obstacles. Despite ambitions to manufacture its own screens for iPhones, Macs, and smartwatches, these plans seem to have been shelved indefinitely.
Initially, Apple’s automotive aspirations aimed at creating a fully autonomous vehicle without conventional controls like pedals and a steering wheel, before pivoting towards developing an electric vehicle.
A previous Bloomberg report revealed that Apple discontinued the internal initiative known as “Project Titan” after investing substantial resources over a decade. While employees involved in the project were offered opportunities to transition to other divisions within Apple, including those reportedly focused on artificial intelligence and home robotics, not all were successfully reintegrated into the company, as indicated by Apple’s WARN report.
Apple is rumored to be at an early stage of designing personal robotics for household use. Among the prototypes under development is a mobile robot designed to follow individuals, alongside a tabletop device equipped with robotic capabilities to manipulate a display, as per another Bloomberg report.
These projects, including the Vision Pro project, underscore Apple’s efforts to explore new revenue streams beyond its traditional product lines.
