Apple self-driving car layoffs give hints to division's direction: Apple operates the car project on a "need-to-know" basis, with only about 5,000 of Apple's 140,000 full-time workers included, according to court documents in a theft of trade secrets criminal case filed this year against an ex-Apple employee.
About 1,200 of those are "core" employees that are "directly working on the development of the project," according to the complaint, which was unsealed in January.
Despite the headcount changes, the company appears to have ramped up its testing on California roads. In a filing with regulators earlier this month, Apple said it had logged nearly 80,000 miles of testing in its home state in 2018, far surpassing the less than 1,000 miles it had logged the year before.
It was, however, far fewer than Alphabet Inc's Waymo unit, which logged 1.2 million miles in California last year.
About 1,200 of those are "core" employees that are "directly working on the development of the project," according to the complaint, which was unsealed in January.
Despite the headcount changes, the company appears to have ramped up its testing on California roads. In a filing with regulators earlier this month, Apple said it had logged nearly 80,000 miles of testing in its home state in 2018, far surpassing the less than 1,000 miles it had logged the year before.
It was, however, far fewer than Alphabet Inc's Waymo unit, which logged 1.2 million miles in California last year.