In a rare round of layoffs for the iPhone maker, Apple has cut over 600 jobs in California after shuttering its secretive self-driving electric car project, according to a recent state filing.

The cuts, affecting 614 employees across eight locations in Santa Clara County, provide a rare glimpse into Apple’s exploratory automotive ambitions and the company’s willingness to shift priorities for even its most ambitious “moonshot” ventures.

While Apple has been tight-lipped about its automotive efforts, details have slowly trickled out over the years, with reports depicting a team of thousands of engineers attempting to build a fully autonomous electric vehicle to rival Tesla and traditional automakers.

Among those let go were machine shop managers, hardware engineers and product design engineers who had been working on the project, known internally as the Special Projects Group, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. None of the impacted locations were at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, suggesting these satellite offices housed the car team.

The layoffs come just weeks after Apple officially pulled the plug on the self-driving car program after years of shifting strategies and leadership turmoil, according to reports from Bloomberg News and other outlets.

While major tech companies like Amazon, Meta, X/Twitter and others have undergone major downsizing in recent months amid economic uncertainty, Apple has largely bucked the trend thanks to the consistent profitability of its consumer hardware like the iPhone.

The official WARN notice filed with California’s labor agency showed the employees were notified of the job cuts on 28 March, with an effective layoff date of 27 May.

Apple’s automotive ambitions stem back nearly a decade, when it first began exploring the development of an electric vehicle to take on Tesla and other automakers in the burgeoning EV market.

The company originally hired thousands of engineers and operations personnel to develop a high-tech battery-powered car featuring full self-driving capabilities, with team members describing their goals as producing a vehicle as revolutionary as the iPhone.

But after years of leadership changes, talent departures, supply chain challenges and technical roadblocks, Apple ultimately scrapped those plans and pivoted to developing autonomous driving software instead, according to reports.

Even those curtailed aspirations proved too lofty, as the self-driving car project was ultimately abandoned last month. Some engineers from the project were reassigned to other teams, such as working on assisted-driving features, according to Bloomberg.

While Apple CEO Tim Cook had long entertained the possibility of entering the automotive sector, the layoffs suggest the tech giant is reining in its most speculative bets amid intensifying competition from rivals like Google, Microsoft and others in key areas like artificial intelligence and augmented reality hardware.