Apple blew $10 billion on failed car project, considered buying Tesla

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson/Jonathan Gitlin/Getty Images)

Apple spent roughly $1 billion a year on its car project before canceling it last month, according to a report in Bloomberg. The project, which apparently made as little sense to many inside Apple as it did to outside observers, began in 2014 as the tech giant looked for a new revenue stream to supplement its hardware and software businesses. But grand plans for a fully autonomous vehicle were never able to overcome the various technical challenges, and prototypes only ever ran on a closed-course test track.

During his tenure as CEO, the late Steve Jobs contemplated Apple getting into the automotive world, an idea that did not survive the global financial crisis of 2008. But by 2013, Apple executives thought this could be "one more example of Apple entering a market very late and vanquishing it."

At first, the company considered simply acquiring Tesla—at the time the startup automaker was worth just under $28 billion, a fraction of the annual profit that Apple was raking in even then. It is suggested that Musk standing down from Tesla was a sticking point, and talks ended. Later, in 2017, Musk apparently tried to interest Apple in buying Tesla, which at the time was mired in Model 3 "production hell," but current Apple CEO Tim Cook refused the meeting.