Bloomberg has noticed that Jobs’ Mob’s self-driving car team top managers have been clearing out their desks and buggering off, leaving the so-called self-driving car project in the lurch.

To be fair the iPhone maker has hundreds of engineers working on underlying self-driving car technology as well as groups of employees working on an actual vehicle.   Doug Field, a former top vehicle engineer for Tesla is still there.

However at least three members of that Apple car management team have departed this year and in recent days, Dave Scott, who led teams working on robotics related to the car, left to become the chief executive officer at Hyperfine, a health care company developing next-generation MRI systems.

Jaime Waydo, who led autonomous car safety and regulation teams, departed to become the chief technology officer at Cavnue, a startup focused on the safety of autonomous cars on public roads.

 In February, Benjamin Lyon, who helped create Apple's original car team several years ago and was key in the future project's development, left to become the chief engineer at Astra, a company developing technology for sending satellites to space.

The question then is how serious is Apple’s self-driving car bid really? We have reported before that while the idea exists in the head of the Tame Apple Press, Jobs' Mob has been unable to sell the idea to carmakers.  The issue is that Apple is insisting that car makers give most of the profits to Apple just for the joy of making the iCar. While that approach works in the technology industry, carmakers are not as dumb and have told Apple to go forth and multiply.

A manager who is in charge of a project which might never be made is not going to have a great career so maybe Apple’s transport managers have just seen the writing on the wall.