Apple scales back on autonomous car plans in a sign of the times

<p>In Elon Musk's telling, the world is always one year away from cars that drive themselves.</p><p>However in the real world, there are increasing signs that it's not coming and might not for a long time. </p><p>I've been <a href="https://www.forexlive.com/news/the-automotive-industry-is-facing-something-of-a-reckoning-20221017/" target="_blank" rel="follow">writing about this </a>for years and I think the market is finally coming to the same conclusion (as TSLA shares sink 20% this year). Certainly, Apple appears to be as it's now pushing back its plans to sell and EV to at least 2028 from 2026.</p><p>Apple first promised a truly driverless car in 2014 but now they're not even working on that. Instead, they've downgraded their hopes to something that's in-line with what Tesla's currently do, which is Level 2 — far from the Level 4 or 5 envisioned.</p><p>The company has already sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the project and the Bloomberg report <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-23/apple-car-ev-set-to-debut-in-2028-with-limited-autonomous-driving?sref=dJOSAJZH" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">says </a>it could be scrapped altogether. Globally, billions have been poured into driver-less car technology and there's no sign that it's getting close. Perhaps there is some AI iteration that gets there but with the breakthroughs in AI, I suspect that R&amp;D money will instead be put into applications that show more progress.</p><p>Time to downgraded the Magnificent Seven into the Super Six:</p><p>Morgan Stanley has $76/share of the company riding on robotaxis.</p>

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.