This is a weirdly titled report which implies it just happened. The "Apple scales back" part was already reported first by Bloomberg last year (which seems to be behind a paywall now) [1]. Bob Mansfield was brought on to refocus Project Titan on the fundamentals (being self-driving) rather that producing a car [2]. But both of these reports have the exact same hedging:

>Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project.

>Five people familiar with Apple’s car project, code-named “Titan,” discussed with The New York Times the missteps that led the tech giant to move — at least for now — from creating a self-driving Apple car to creating technology for a car that someone else builds.

And that's because the idea that Apple is going to be an auto parts supplier like Delphi that sells middleware to car companies is completely laughable.

There isn't actually much news in this report. The tidbits that the reporter got clearly motivated writing this article but it doesn't actually live up to its premise. In fact, PAIL seems like an expansion of Apple's efforts from what was previously reported.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2016/07/28/apple-car-autonomous-dr...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/how-apple...