After a nearly decade-long and ultimately unsuccessful car project, Apple sold its massive Arizona test site to Waymo. The $220 million sale of the 5.500-acre property allows the company to recoup a small fraction of the enormous $10 billion budget it spent on the project.
The facility, located in Wittman, Arizona, was purchased in 2021 for $125 million by Route 14 Investment Partners LLC, a company previously known to be linked to Apple. With this acquisition, Waymo gained access to a larger area to test its fleet of autonomous vehicles.
A new center for autonomous vehicles.
Waymo officials stated that this large facility in Arizona will be used to simulate driving scenarios in a controlled environment. The facility provides a suitable infrastructure for critical needs such as driverless vehicle testing, motion control, and operational training processes.
The 5.458-acre site, previously used by Chrysler, includes a 115-acre city track and a highway track suitable for autonomous vehicle testing. The facility also features a 35-acre vehicle dynamics area and a four-mile oval track.
This spacious area allows Waymo to conduct its tests in privacy and at a safe distance. In addition to its existing centers in California and Ohio, the company aims to significantly increase its testing capacity with this new investment.
The final traces of the project are being erased for Apple.
Apple completely ended its autonomous vehicle testing in September 2024 by revoking its license to test autonomous vehicles. This sale is seen as an effort by Apple to divest itself of the last physical assets remaining from its high-cost and no longer used project.
The computer vision technologies and research developed as part of the project were transferred to other units of the company. This expertise is expected to be utilized in areas such as Apple Intelligence and future robotics research.
Although the $220 million in sales that followed this $10 billion project represent a small part of the company's financial statements, it clearly shows that the project has been completely shut down.
