Did Apple just dismiss 200 employees?

Apple has been reported to dismiss 200 employees his week!  The CNBC news stated that Apple had hired these employees for a project named “Titan”. The news of employees’ dismissal has been confirmed by Apple’s spokesperson. The Project Titan is an Autonomous car project that shall be undertaken later as it has huge opportunities within. Commenting on the employees’ dismissal he said that they had been shifted to other sectors of the company. The spokesperson further added: “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,” “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,”.

What was this project all about?

Apple initiated the Project Titan in 2014, and it was being suggested that the company is working on building an electric vehicle. The team was facing leadership issues and other internal problems due to which it was announced in 2016 that Apple is now focusing on Autonomous driving system rather than a car. In August 2018 Apple hired Doug Field to lead Project Titan alongside Bob Mansfield. The team was now motivated to build a fully autonomous vehicle. Yet the dismissal of more than 200 employees this week certainly suggests that there had been restructuring issues under the new team leader. Ming-Chi Kuo, who is a reliable Apple analyst, views that the Apple car will be launched by 2023. However, for now, the Apple car is a project being set aside as there had been restructuring issues of the project. Also, the vision is unclear: will it be a car or an autonomous driving plan?