Apple makes cuts to its self-driving car project

Apple’s long-touted autonomous car has been dealt a serious blow amid revelations the tech giant has announced staff cuts to the project.

Several hundred employees devoted to the ‘Project Titan’ autonomous team will be redeployed within Apple’s ranks, the Cupertino company said last week.

The announcement follows the senior appointment of former Tesla engineer, Doug Field, at Apple in August.

“We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple,” a spokesperson for the company told US news outlets.

The deviation marks a significant change of heart for Apple, which had pumped plenty of money and resources into Titan from when the project started in 2014, and reportedly pondered ties with large scale automotive contractors including Magna-Steyr.

A handful of ex-Holden employees even ventured over to the tech giant in the lead-up to the Lion brand's local shutdown.

Apple’s pioneering electric, self-driving car project first hit shaky ground back in 2016 with reports of job cuts to Project Titan.

The tech firm’s automotive aspirations continued to evolve in the background, namely through a fleet of autonomous vehicles it had been testing, based on the Lexus RX300.

Withstanding the latest announcement, Apple still holds hope ‘Project Titan’ will eventually come to fruition.

“We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever,” the spokesperson said.