THIS ALWAYS SEEMED LIKE A BAD FIT FOR APPLE AND ITS 40% MARGINS: Apple Cancels Work on Electric Car, Ending Decadelong Effort.

Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.

The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company.

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The Apple car team also has several hundred hardware engineers and vehicle designers. It’s possible they will be able to apply for jobs on other Apple teams. There will be layoffs, but it’s unclear how many.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, declined to comment.

The move came as a relief to investors, who sent Apple shares climbing Tuesday after an earlier decline. The stock was up about 1.2% to $183.37 at 2:33 p.m. in New York after Bloomberg reported the news.

Not even Tesla makes anything like the kind of margins Apple earns from computers and consumer electronics, and I’m not sure there’s anybody but Tesla turning a profit on EVs.