This is referring to the team working on the self driving functionality.

Not sure if 100% a joke or just partly but Volkswagen was probably providing the mechanical engineers who were retrofitting Lexus vehicles of the project as they had for the already-deployed driverless vans. See NYT & MacReports

Skilled developers can easily transition to another field of software engineering.

Except news always was that Apple was pushing pretty hard into self-driving vehicles, which would use much the same AI learning systems as you need for generative AI.

One question for you smarty pants: is their car real, or artificial?

Once upon a time, stoves had a dial you set, and it was basically a resistor and some wires. Today, a stove has a computer built in it that operates the entire thing.

While the computer in a modern oven is simple - it is an illustration that more, and more of what we have is computerized. When you add in reinforcement learning algorithms to adjust factors like say, If the fridge is aware of what time you generally open the fridge it can opt to kick on the heat pump a little before that to bring the temperature down and avoid running while it is open. This could save pennies of electricity in a year. But more importantly - could lead to less duty cycles on the condesor that could cause a fridge to say instead of lasting 10 years, last 12 years.

If you are starting a car company today, what you have to be thinking about is a reality where we move to "Humans don't drive, the cars drive you" - I mean even a manual control situation could have the AI actually being a watcher in effect we "Let" people drive, but if the AI detects an unobserved obstacle etc it immediately takes over and adjusts. Well: You need to build that - and that, is AI.

If a company isn't thinking about AI, and makes anything but basic appliances - they are likely on a limited time window because at some point Autonomous cars WILL be good enough, and the safety consideration will make both people, and governments, along with insurance companies to eliminate human driven vehicles.

Apple isn't looking next year, or a year after. They are looking 5 to 10 years out and they don't see a path where they can effectively compete in the car industry and make the profits they are after. However, if they can solve the AI driving problem - they don't NEED to make a car, they can sell the brains and system that drives the car.