Apple's Self-Driving Car Program Failed. But It Still Made Your iPhone Better

Apple's self-driving car program failed. But the AI chipsets developed from it help power the iPhones and MacBooks on sale today.

Apple Car renderings by Motor1

Nico DeMattia

By: Nico DeMattia

Jul 13, at 3:31pm ET

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Remember when Apple wanted to make a car? For about a decade, starting around 2014, Apple quietly spent billions developing a self-driving car. The project was cancelled in early 2024 before it could bear fruit—terrible pun intended—but that doesn't mean the whole effort was useless.

In fact, the Apple Car that never was might actually end up being considered one of the tech giant's most important projects of this century. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, one of the foremost Apple whisperers, the knowhow and hardware developed during "Project Titan" would go on to power all of its products moving forward.

To get ahead of Musk and his early claims of an imminent autonomous future, Apple wanted to bring full Level 5 autonomy to its electric car. And it realized that wasn't going to be possible without next-level machine learning and artificial intelligence. So it went full-throttle on AI, both at the hardware and software levels. Apple's big wigs didn't want Siri just searching stuff from a database quickly, but also to have its chipsets handle AI processing themselves, in the device.

"Most notably, that effort gave rise to its Neural Engine, the dedicated portion of Apple’s chips responsible for on-device AI processing," Gurman wrote on Sunday.

That powered FaceID in the iPhone X. It was in the M1 chipset, Apple's first in-house silicon design, which powers the MacBook typing this out right now. (Yes, I'm still rocking a 2021 M1 Pro, don't judge). And it's been in every Apple computer ever since. Apple is currently on the M5 chipset, which is far beyond what the M1 was capable of. And not only is it working on the M6, it's already working on the M7 and M8 chips that will follow it. All of which have AI at the top of their priority lists.

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Have an iPhone in your pocket? Yeah, me too. If yours is an iPhone 15 Pro Max or newer, it has Apple Intelligence. It's available on every new Apple device; MacBooks, iPads, and even Apple Watches. With it, Siri is smarter and more capable, your phone can recognize what the camera is looking at, and you can easily erase your ex from old photos that you like. Aside from the existential dread of having an AI-powered future forced upon us all against our will—maybe that's just me—Apple's AI is a pretty snazzy bit of tech that can make life a bit easier. And Apple's work on the car project eventually made its way into the custom processors that run Apple Intelligence in the company's servers, Bloomberg says.

Apple spent a reported $10 billion on Project Titan, building new facilities and filing hundreds of patents, before shelving it, Gurman reports. We'll never get to drive around in a four-wheeled iPhone, although you can argue the new Ferrari Luce looks pretty close. Still, the Apple Car wasn't a failure. It all would have gone to waste if it weren't for the AI tech. So every time Siri gives you an impressive assist, thank the doomed Apple Car.

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