Apple Crushes My Hopes and Dreams
I have long loved Apple Stock, pinning many of my hopes on the stock. In fact, Apple is currently about 12% of my portfolio. This may sound foolish, and it did when I was writing about it, but I was optimistic about the Apple Car, and now Tim Cook and his dastardly team of executives have crushed my dream, but I shall continue to cope. However, I will spend the next few hundred words criticizing this project and its massive capital expenditures.
Project Titan was the name for Apple's super secret, but not really, car project. Project Titan has been rumored to exist for a while, but most people believe it started around a decade ago, and as soon as Project Titan began ramping up, people were excited. People were excited for two reasons. First, Project Titan is an extremely cool name, and whoever came up with it needs to be promoted. Second, Apple is excellent at basically everything they do. Apple is an extremely efficient corporation with a history of success on almost all fronts, and they had/have billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to throw at any issue. Apple started Project Titan because electric vehicles and autonomous cars were all the rage, particularly Tesla, which Apple is trying to exceed. The problem with Project Titan was that building a car befitting the Apple brand was extremely difficult. The car basically had to be a Tesla but 2x better, or it was a waste of shareholder and consumer dollars, so Apple just threw more and more money at the problem.
Eventually, Apple's Project Titan racked up 2,000 employees totaling over $200,000,000 in expenses yearly on employees, and that figure is without factoring in any production or any non-Apple employee help. The project kept losing talent to other electric vehicle companies who had much faster development plans. Because of the employee loss, Apple kept pushing back dates, creating a vicious cycle. Initially, the car was supposed to be fully autonomous, then it was supposed to be partially autonomous, and now finally, it is dead.
Losses kept mounting on every front: personnel, cash, and eventually support from executives. News of the Apple Car's demise bums me out, to say the least. While my love of the Apple Car was a smidgen tongue in cheek, I was genuinely optimistic that if Apple could pull this off, they would take the industry by storm, but instead, I got billions wasted and my pride a bit bruised. I just thought there was no way Apple could pull the plug on a project they had sunk so much chedda into, but I was wrong.
And really, this feels like a leadership failure. In 2021, the Apple Car chief left the company. After six-seven years of nothing (except for Apple Car Play) and your chief leaving, how do you not pull the plug? You either ride it out (pun), or you quit. I would have rather them make it to the finish line (pun) as I believe they could have, but I also understand the decision to quit, especially with BYD (Chinese Tesla) really coming into form. This was the right decision, but it came too late. I am still angry at you Tim. I won't sell my stock, but I want a plane.
