After a decade of rumors, secretive developments, executive entrances and exits, and pivots, Apple reportedly told employees yesterday that its car project, internally called "Project Titan," is no more. Those working on the technology of some four-odd hype cycles ago--electric, autonomous vehicles--will reportedly now focus on the vaunted advancement of the day, generative AI. The project wind-down was first reported by Bloomberg; TechCrunch reports the restructuring of Project Titan will likely include layoffs. "Prototypes are easy, volume production is hard, positive cash flow is excruciating," Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted a few years back. It's a lesson would-be car companies--as well as Tesla--seem to learn again and again.

General Motors secured its pivot to a high-tech future Wednesday by announcing plans to convert more assembly plants in North America to make electric vehicles by the end of the decade and to double company revenues by that time as it unveils more software and new EVs. GM leaders are expected to reveal new technology, such as an advancement to the automaker's hands-free driving system, as well as more EV products, including a new Chevrolet SUV EV priced at $30,000, during its annual Investor Day presentation, starting at 1 p.m. ET. "Our early investments in these growth trends have transformed GM from automaker to platform innovator, with customers at the center," said CEO Mary Barra. "GM will use its hardware and software platforms to innovate and improve their daily experience, leading everybody on the journey to an all-electric future." Barra emphasized that no hourly workers will lose their jobs in the transition to electric and GM continues to hire salaried employees who have a background in technology and digital software. "Late last year we hired 3,000 employees and this year alone we've hired 8,000 salaried workers especially in the technology, digital and the software space," Barra said.

ZHAOQING, China – Xpeng Motors, a Chinese electric car startup, recently opened a large assembly plant in southeastern China and is building a matching factory nearby. It has announced plans for a third. Another Chinese electric car company, Nio, has opened one large factory in central China and is preparing to build a second several kilometers away. Zhejiang Geely, owner of Volvo, showed off an enormous new electric car factory in eastern China last month rivaling in size some of the world's largest assembly plants. Evergrande, a troubled Chinese real estate giant, has just built electric car factories in the cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou and hopes to be making almost as many fully electric cars by 2025 as all of North America.

Not only is Detroit building vehicles people can drive, but now it is producing vehicles that can drive themselves. John Krafcik, CEO of Google self-driving affiliate Waymo LLC, said Monday that its Detroit plant is operating and outfitting fleets of vehicles with its autonomous driving hardware and software. The milestone allows the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary to put its automated "driver" into vehicles at mass scale. Doing so will help Waymo, an acknowledged leader in the self-driving space, to test its technology and expand its robotaxi service. Google self-driving affiliate Waymo LLC's Detroit plant already has outfitted 30 Jaguar I-PACE SUVs with the company's autonomous driving technology.

General Motors Co said on Monday it will cut production of slow-selling models and slash its North American workforce in the face of a stagnant market for traditional gas-powered sedans, shifting more investment to electric and autonomous vehicles. The announcement is the biggest restructuring in North America for the US's largest carmaker since its bankruptcy a decade ago. Its shares rallied 7.6 percent to $38.66. GM plans to halt production next year at three assembly plants - Lordstown, Ohio, Hamtramck, Michigan, and Oshawa, Ontario. The company also plans to stop building several models now assembled at those plants, including the Chevrolet Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse.

When a few workers at Ford's assembly plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, started wearing exoskeletons for the first time, people made fun of them. Calls of "Hey, Iron Man!" rang across the factory line. Putting one on, I understand the comments – I feel and look a bit like a superhero. The inside of the assembly plant is like the inside of a clock, full of moving parts that all work together.

While videos of giant robots welding vehicles are exciting to watch (sparks!), humans are an important part of the assembly of vehicles. However, as you would expect, doing the same thing over and over often leads to injuries. For workers reaching up all day, that motion can be especially hard on their shoulders. To help, Ford will be offering exoskeleton vests to folks in 15 assembly plants around the world. The EksoVests (built by Ekso Bionics) are available for employees that have to reach overhead multiple times a day.

Tesla Inc.'s Elon Musk, who's built up an aura around how automated his car assembly plant will be, has good news for humans: We still need your help. "Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake," the CEO wrote in a tweet Friday, hours after CBS aired an interview in which he acknowledged putting too many robots in Tesla's lone auto factory. It was a significant concession by Musk, 46, who boasted less than a year ago that Tesla was building a competitive advantage over established automakers by programming robots to quickly produce vehicles. Instead, Tesla has struggled to hit targets for the Model 3, the first sedan the company has tried to mass-manufacture and eventually sell for as little as $35,000.

Machine translation (MT) was one of the first applications of artificial intelligence technology that was deployed to solve real-world problems. Since the early 1960s, researchers have been building and utilizing computer systems that can translate from one language to another without requiring extensive human intervention. In the late 1990s, Ford Vehicle Operations began working with Systran Software Inc. to adapt and customize its machine-translation technology in order to translate Ford's vehicle assembly build instructions from English to German, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. The use of machine translation was made necessary by the vast amount of dynamic information that needed to be translated in a timely fashion. The assembly build instructions at Ford contain text written in a controlled language as well as unstructured remarks and comments.

In this article I discuss a deployed application at Ford Motor Company that utilizes AI technology for the analysis of potential ergonomic concerns at Ford's assembly plants. The manufacture of motor vehicles is a complex and dynamic problem, and the costs related to workplace injuries and lost productivity due to bad ergonomic design can be very significant. Ford has developed two separate ergonomic analysis systems that have been integrated into the process planning for manufacturing system at Ford known as the Global Study and Process Allocation System (GSPAS). GSPAS has become the global repository for standardized engineering processes and data for assembling all Ford vehicles, including parts, tools, and standard labor time. One of the more significant benefits of GSPAS is the use of a controlled language, known as Standard Language, which is used throughout Ford to write the process assembly instructions.