After shutting down its electric vehicle project in February, Apple says it’s laying off more than 600 employees involved with the project, as well as workers in its smartwatch display project.
Apple filed eight reports to the California Employment Development Department, in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) process, totaling 614 employees. At least 87 of the laid off employees were part of a secret Apple facility for designing and producing its own device displays, Bloomberg reports. Apple started shutting down the project around the same time it shuttered its multi-billion dollar, self-driving EV project nicknamed Project Titan. The laid off employees were notified on March 28, and layoffs are effective May 27, according to the WARN notices.
The layoffs mark Apple’s largest since the pandemic, and many laid off employees were part of Apple’s car project office in Santa Clara, Califonia.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday morning.
Apple COO Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, vice president of the car project, announced the end of its plans to build and sell an electric car in February. Some of the employees that were part of the Special Projects Group were moved to Apple’s AI division, and others were encouraged to apply for open positions in other parts of the company. The car project had almost 2,000 employees, including designers and hardware engineers.
The turbulent car project experienced leadership and strategy changes, as well as delays, throughout its decade-long existence. Apple had planned to release a car model from the project by 2026 that included advanced self-driving features, it said at the end of 2022. At the end of January, the plan was delayed to 2028, and the price for the EV was also lowered from $120,000 to $100,000.