According to insiders:

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For years, the Apple car was the subject of wild speculation, but now work has been halted.

(Bild: AP)

Apple has spent more than 10 billion dollars (9.25 billion euros) on its finally abandoned car plans, according to a newspaper report. The "New York Times" quoted the amount on Wednesday, citing several people familiar with the project.

According to media reports, the US iPhone company informed employees involved in the project on Tuesday that it was being discontinued. According to these reports, Apple had recently wanted to launch an electric car with driver assistance functions, but then buried this plan.

Work had already been underway for 10 years
The company started development around a decade ago and was also working on software for autonomous driving, among other things. According to reports, programmers from the car project are to develop software with artificial intelligence instead. CEO Tim Cook held out the prospect of new AI functions from Apple at the online Annual General Meeting on Wednesday. A preview of software innovations for Apple devices is traditionally provided at the WWDC developer conference in June.

There have been many rumors about Apple's car project over the years. The company is said to have shown the first prototypes to potential partners from the automotive industry years ago, but then, according to media reports, it was temporarily decided to focus on software for autonomous driving first. The only thing that was definitively known was that Apple was sending test cars converted into self-driving vehicles onto the road in Silicon Valley until recently.