Over two years after the Apple Car program was declared dead, Apple has offloaded its 5,500-acre Arizona proving ground to Waymo. It's a sale that recoups $220M from the $10B Apple spent on the failed project.
The Apple Car project is a program believed to have been cancelled by Apple after about a decade of research and development. In what is the surest sign of it being dead, Apple has sold off a massive parcel of land used for self-driving vehicle testing.
In a filing reported by TechCrunch dated June 5, the property at Wittman, Arizona, has been acquired by Waymo. The sale, which was confirmed by Waymo, sees a payment of $220 million being handed over to Route 14 Investment Partners LLC.
Route 14 is a Delaware shell company believed to be connected to Apple. After renting the facility for a number of years, it Route 14 acquired it for $125 million in 2021.
The purchase gives Waymo yet another place to test out its vehicles. It already has locations in California and Ohio, but the Arizona lot will give it a massive amount of land for testing its fleet.
A Waymo spokesperson said the Arizona facility would be used to simulate driving scenarios in a controlled environment. This is to test its self-driving system, including rider-only testing, motion control, operational training workflows, and its future testing needs.
A self-driving playground
Apple's renting and later purchase of the facility made sense at the time. It is a location that has a lot to offer companies in the automotive business.
The 5,458-acre site was previously used by Chrysler, again as a vehicle proving ground. It was then sold to a housing developer in 2005, but was later annexed by the City of Surprise and left alone.
A view of the facility - Image credit: Google Earth
In 2016, the city signed a development agreement with the then-owner SFI Grand Vista LLC, under the intention that it would be used by Route 14.
Despite being over 5,000 acres in size, only a small part of the facility has been set up for testing purposes. There is a 115-acre city course, as well as a freeway course geared towards autonomous vehicle testing.
It also has a 35-acre vehicle dynamics area and a four-mile oval track.
The sheer size of the facility provides ample opportunity for occupiers to build out the area for extended testing. All while still maintaining a safe distance from the edge of the lot, which also helps keep the testing private.
Cash back from an expensive project
The sale of $220 million in now-unused land sounds like a lot, and so does the $95 million in value the site earned in just five years. That is, until you remember that this involves Apple.
At Apple's scale, the proceeds of the property sale will help fund other projects, but it's pocket change compared to its other investments.
Indeed, compared to the $10 billion Apple has been estimated to have shelled out over a decade for Project Titan, it's barely 2% of the outlay.
It is, however, an attempt by Apple to shed the last vestiges of the extremely expensive failure.
It's no longer testing its self-driving system on roads, after cancelling the Autonomous Vehicles Program Manufacturer's Testing Permit in September 2024. Holding onto private grounds for testing doesn't make sense if there aren't any planned for the future.
The work wasn't entirely a bust for Apple, as the teams and research that went into it will have been absorbed by other parts of the company. It's not hard to imagine some of the computer vision elements being incorporated into Apple Intelligence, or elements being used to push forward its robotics efforts.
The sale, two years after a very public funeral for a very secretive project, is merely Apple getting rid of a massive site that it has no use for anymore.
It's a reminder of the costly mistake that hurt its wallet and with little to prove for it.
