The Apple Car may have never left the garage, but it clearly gave birth to Apple’s AI ambitions. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple’s canceled self-driving car project, which cost more than a decade and more than $10 billion before it was scrapped in 2024, retained the core of Apple’s Intelligence technology. Ironically, one of Apple’s most expensive failures may be one of its most important long-term investments.
The Apple Car forced Apple to think like an AI company
When Apple started developing its self-driving car, the goal wasn’t just to build an electric car. The company is reportedly looking for Level 5 autonomous driving, the highest level of self-driving where the car can operate on its own without human intervention.
That ambitious goal forced Apple to tackle one of the biggest engineering challenges imaginable: processing massive AI workloads locally and in real time. To get there, developers have invested heavily in machine learning research and custom silicon designed to process AI. Although the dedicated chip intended for the car was never a finished product, the basic work was not wasted. Instead, it evolved into the Neural Engine, Apple’s dedicated AI processor that’s now built into nearly every modern Apple chip.
The first Neural Engine arrived inside the iPhone X in 2017, powering features like Face ID and Animoji. Since then, Apple has gradually expanded the technology throughout its product line. Every Apple Silicon Mac launched since 2020 features the Neural Engine, which gives Macs dedicated hardware to run AI tasks locally instead of relying entirely on the cloud.
Its impact goes well beyond the iPhone
Bloomberg says the impact of the scrap car project extends beyond consumer equipment. The same research is reported to have influenced Apple’s Ultra-class Mac chips and custom processors that run Apple Intelligence servers. While Apple has struggled to deliver AI software features as quickly as rivals like Google and Microsoft, the company has spent more than a decade introducing the hardware needed to support them. Those early investments are now starting to pay off as Apple continues to expand Apple Intelligence and rebuild Siri with more capable AI models.
Perhaps that is the most interesting part of the story. The Apple Car is often remembered as a spectacular failure because it never caught on with customers. But inside, Bloomberg suggests that the project has achieved something more important: it accelerated Apple’s expertise in AI hardware years before artificial AI became the industry’s biggest battleground. In retrospect, an abandoned company car may never transport people from one place to another. But the technology it inspired is already helping power Apple’s next generation of AI experiences, and that could end up being a very important area.
