Apple appears to have dismissed almost 200 staff members from its Project Titan self-driving vehicle department.
Per a new filing with the California Employment Development Department, the majority of the affected positions were engineering roles. The layoffs include 38 engineering program managers, 33 hardware engineers, 31 product design engineers, and 22 software engineers.
This puts the number at 190 self-driving car employees in both Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, California. The layoffs will officially take effect on April 16th, according to the filing.
It’s unknown as to exactly what’s happening with this staff, albeit Apple has indicated that “some groups” were being moved to projects in other parts of Apple.
Earlier this month, data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shed light on Apple’s self-driving car testing. According to that data, Apple logged 79,745 miles of testing in California from November 31st, 2017 to December 1st, 2018. According to disengagement data, Apple logged 871.65 disengagements per 1,000 miles, making for an average of 1.1 miles per disengagement.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac and the San Francisco Chronicle