Apple's secretive self driving car division is going to be hit with layoffs.

(SOUNDBITE)(English) REUTERS TECH CORRESPONDENT, STEVEN NELLIS, SAYING: "I'm Steven Nellis with Reuters in San Francisco.

Apple on Wednesday confirmed that about 190 employees are going to be laid off in a few weeks from its self driving car project called Project Titan." While the company has talked about its interest in self driving vehicles broadly they haven't ever said exactly what they're doing except for releasing a few research papers about self driving software it also disclosing how many miles they've driven on the road which was a lot more in 2018 than it was in 2017.

But what they've never said is whether they actually plan to build a full car or just the sensors and computer systems and software to control a full car.

We got a few more hints today in the kind of positions that Apple is laying off.

They disclose that they're going to lay off more than 40 hardware engineers more than two dozen software engineers and then a couple of really interesting positions as well in ergonomics engineer product design engineers..

(SOUNDBITE)(English) REUTERS TECH CORRESPONDENT, STEVEN NELLIS, SAYING: "... and at least one machine shop supervisor.

Although we don't know if that machine shop was making things like automotive parts or just the smaller housings and things..." ...for computers and sensors that they would need to engineer along with them.

However what we don't know is where Apple heads from after these layoffs.

These appear to be the first big change implemented by (SOUNDBITE)(English) REUTERS TECH CORRESPONDENT, STEVEN NELLIS, SAYING: "...a relatively new executive named Doug Field who had been at Apple for a long time, went to Tesla to oversee its engineering operations.

But last year came back to Apple.

So this shakeup appears to be..." ... one of Doug Field's first big moves.

It is also part of some broader moves that Apple has been making early this year as the iPhone kind of hits maturity and the Company turns toward services in other new areas including self driving cars.