The Apple Car may have never left the garage, but it apparently gave birth to Apples AI ambitions. According to Bloombergs Mark Gurman, Apples canceled autonomous vehicle project, one that consumed more than a decade of work and over $10 billion before being scrapped in 2024, ended up laying the technological foundation for Apple Intelligence. In a rather ironic twist, one of Apples most expensive failures may also become one of its most important long-term investments.

　　The Apple Car forced Apple to think like an AI company

When Apple first began developing its self-driving vehicle, the goal wasnt simply to build an electric car. The company reportedly wanted Level 5 autonomous driving, the highest level of self-driving capability where a vehicle can operate entirely on its own without any human intervention.

That ambitious target forced Apple to tackle one of the biggest engineering challenges imaginable: processing enormous AI workloads locally and in real time. To get there, engineers invested heavily in machine learning research and custom silicon designed specifically for AI processing. Although the dedicated chip intended for the car never made it into a finished product, the underlying work didnt go to waste. Instead, it evolved into the Neural Engine, Apples dedicated AI processor thats now built into virtually every modern Apple chip.

The first Neural Engine arrived inside the iPhone X in 2017, powering features such as Face ID and Animoji. Since then, Apple has steadily expanded the technology across its entire product lineup. Every Apple Silicon Mac launched since 2020 includes a Neural Engine, giving Macs dedicated hardware to run AI tasks locally instead of relying entirely on the cloud.

　　Its influence goes well beyond the iPhone

Bloomberg says the impact of the abandoned vehicle project stretches far beyond consumer devices. The same research reportedly influenced Apples powerful Ultra-class Mac chips as well as the custom processors currently running Apple Intelligence servers. While Apple has struggled to deliver AI software features as quickly as rivals like Google and Microsoft, the company has spent more than a decade quietly building the hardware required to support them. Those early investments are now beginning to pay off as Apple continues expanding Apple Intelligence and rebuilding Siri around more capable AI models.

Thats perhaps the most fascinating part of the story. The Apple Car is often remembered as a spectacular failure because it never reached customers. Yet internally, Bloomberg suggests the project achieved something arguably more valuable: it accelerated Apples expertise in AI hardware years before generative AI became the industrys biggest battleground. In hindsight, the companys abandoned vehicle may never transport people from one place to another. But the technology it inspired is already helping power Apples next generation of AI experiences, and that might end up being the far more important destination.