Apple said on Wednesday it planned to lay off 190 employees in its self-driving car program, Project Titan, providing some clues on the company’s on the the automotive technologies.
In a filing with state regulators, Apple said it planned to lay off people from eight different Santa Clara County facilities near its Cupertino, California, headquarters, as of April 16. The company confirmed that the reduction was from the self-driving car program. Among those laid off were at least two dozen software engineers, including a machine learning engineer, and 40 hardware engineers.
Three product design engineers and an ergonomics engineer face layoffs. A machine shop supervisor was among the reductions, though it is unclear how many machinists reported to the supervisor and whether the shop fabricates automotive parts or smaller parts for electronics and sensors.
Apple has showed interest in self-driving cars but has has never detailed precisely which technologies it is working on and whether it seeks to build a whole vehicle or other parts related to autonomous vehicle tech, such as sensors, computer system or software.
Apple’s Project Titan was supervised by Doug Field, who returned to Apple last year as Vice President of Special Projects from electric car maker Tesla Inc.
Apple’s car project occupies about 1,200 employees that are “directly working on the development of the project,” according to court documents in a theft of trade secrets criminal case filed this year against an ex-Apple employee.
In a filing with regulators earlier this month, Apple said it had already logged nearly 80,000 miles of testing in California in 2018.T