The California Department of Motor Vehicles’ Self-Driving Vehicle Program regularly states which companies interested in self-driving technology, fleets, and not-so-secret testing with what fleets and driver fleets are inspecting and testing their self-driving four-wheelers within the state’s borders, and while Waymo, Cruise, or Tesla are part of this program has reduced its officially reported numbers, Zoox, Nvidia and Apple keep increasing it.
Unofficial Apple Car concept (source: Vanarama) [+]
According to a recent report from the Californian program, Apple already employs 201 drivers – or supervisors in the self-driving context – although the official test fleet still consists of 67 vehicles, which Apple refuses to disclose to the outside world. It is certain that something along the lines of electric cars and self-driving cars is being prepared in Cupertino (or where the iCar site, which is obviously not under that name, is located), because in recent years, Tim Cook’s team has confirmed key people from the tech world and major car brands, and invested billions of dollars in the vehicle program, which is still it can always be quite a few years away from being on the street.
Several manufacturing and supplier partners have already been discussed at the rumor level, but for now Apple is in no hurry to make an announcement, and there is no reason to: in the United States, the proportion of annual sales of electric cars is still low (although it is quite high and growing rapidly in California), and the detailed, independent and general self-driving without laser 3D mapping is still far away, no matter what the Tesla leader Elon Musk promises – in the video above, for example, the vehicle still required the driver’s full supervision. At the same time, the related technologies and software take just as many years to develop as the vehicle itself from the design table to the showroom, and Apple wants to do everything possible in-house. Let’s say Cupertino doesn’t excel in vehicle manufacturing, but that’s what the partners and the lured specialists are for.
