After the car project, which lasted nearly ten years and ended in failure, Apple handed over its huge testing area in Arizona to Waymo. The $220 million sale for this 5,500-decare land allows the company to recover a small portion of the huge $10 billion budget it spent on the project.

The facility, located in Wittman, Arizona, was purchased for 125 million dollars in 2021 by Route 14 Investment Partners LLC, which was previously known to be in contact with Apple. With this acquisition, Waymo gained a larger area that it will use to test its autonomous vehicle fleet.

A new center for autonomous vehicles

Waymo officials stated that this large facility in Arizona will be used to simulate driving scenarios in a controlled environment. Facility; It offers a suitable infrastructure for critical requirements such as driverless vehicle tests, movement control and operational training processes.

The 5,458-decare land, which was previously used by Chrysler, includes a 115-decare urban track and a highway track suitable for autonomous vehicle tests. The facility also has a 35-acre vehicle dynamics area and a four-mile oval track.

This large area allows Waymo to conduct its tests confidentially and safely. The company aims to significantly increase its testing capacity with this new investment, in addition to its existing centers in California and Ohio.

The last traces of the project are being erased for Apple

Apple canceled its autonomous vehicle testing permit in September 2024, completely ending its testing on the roads. This sale is seen as Apple’s effort to dispose of the last remaining physical assets from its high-cost project that it no longer uses.

Computer vision technologies and research developed within the scope of the project were transferred to other units of the company. This knowledge is expected to be utilized in areas such as Apple Intelligence and future robotics studies.

The $220 million sale that followed this project, on which Apple spent $10 billion, clearly shows that the project has been closed completely, even though it has a small place in the company’s financial statements.

Do you think it is a real strategy for Apple to abandon its car project and shift these resources to the field of artificial intelligence and robotics?