According to people familiar with the matter, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, the vice president in charge of the effort, jointly made the decision. The two executives told employees that the program will begin to taper off, with many employees working on automotive research and development being redirected to the artificial intelligence department. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly important priority for the company. There are also hundreds of hardware engineers and automotive designers on Apple’s automotive team, and they are likely to apply for jobs on other Apple teams as well....