The Apple Car crash

It appears we’re never going to get a ride in the Apple Car. After a decade of work, seemingly countless strategies, and a reported $10 billion invested, Apple appears to be out of the automotive business. Back in 2014, at the top of the self-driving hype cycle and when electric cars seemed poised to take over in no time, it seemed so simple. But it rarely works out the way you’d think.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we chat about the Apple Car era. What we knew, what we didn’t, why Apple wanted to build a car in the first place, why Jony Ive and Tim Cook took a fake car ride with a fake Siri guiding the way, and whether there might have been another harebrained project more worth Apple’s time and resources. (Here’s a hint: it’s a screen. Maybe the biggest one you have.)

After that, The Verge’s Lauren Feiner joins the show to talk about this week’s Supreme Court hearing in which two cases came together in a debate about free speech, content moderation, the First Amendment, and exactly how big a newspaper YouTube would be. Then, we all do a lightning round of tech news, talking AI diversity and AI pins and why all of TikTok is suddenly strangely quiet.

If you want to know more about the topics we discuss in this episode, here are a few links to get you started, beginning with the Apple Car:

And our lightning round picks: