The original goal wasn't to just build a car. lots of companies are doing that and the financial returns are limited. It would have been a poor investment for A

The original goal wasn't to just build a car. lots of companies are doing that and the financial returns are limited. It would have been a poor investment for Apple. Apple wanted to launch true self-driving transportation. That would have been revolutionary and when they started, many people thought that was a goal that could be realized in 5-10 years. Since then we have learned that self-driving and much more complex and harder to get right. Apple seems to have tried some different approaches to the problem, but eventually they decided it was not worth pursuing and cancelled the project. It was inevitable that they would have to lay off some people with skills that could not translate to other products. What is amazing is that they seem to have been able to retain 70% of that team.