For a long time, many people thought the cancelled car project was a huge waste of money and time for the giant tech company. However, it turns out that the decade of hard work is exactly what gave it the massive power boost needed for its newest computer parts.
The heavy artificial intelligence work done for the vehicles is now being packed directly into the upcoming processors, and this changes the entire narrative around the company’s past decisions.
The cancelled vehicle project gave life to better processors
When Apple officially ended its vehicle program after ten years of secret development, critics called it a massive failure. But the company simply moved its vehicle team over to its AI division. All the advanced self-driving code it built required an incredible amount of smart computing.
Years ago, Tim Cook even called self-driving technology the mother of all smart projects. The company realized that if it could figure out how to make a car think for itself, it could easily make a laptop or an iPhone do amazing things. That early foundation is why Apple finalizes M7 chip design in record time to push AI limits today.
Focusing on smart features instead of basic speed upgrades
Instead of just making the next chips a little bit faster at opening apps or saving battery life, the designers took a totally different path. The M7 and M8 processors are built specifically to handle complex machine learning tasks that regular processors struggle with.
By using the blueprints from its car research, the brand is designing chips that process language and images locally. This shift in focus proves that the billions spent on the car were actually an early investment in the future of computing.
Rather than a forgotten mistake, the vehicle project will quietly live on in millions of devices sitting on our desks and in our pockets.
