Apple’s fleet of self-driving cars is expanding at an astonishing pace after starting with just three vehicles a year ago.
New records posted by the California Department of Motor Vehicles reveals that Apple currently has the third largest number of autonomous cars in the state, but it’s closing the gap on the Google’s self-driving car project that holds the number two spot.
Tesla is struggling to get its cars into customer’s hands. Apple is quietly developing its own self-driving car. The two should team up, according to one investor.
Apple would provide its long experience in bringing high tech products to market. Tesla would contribute fresh ideas to the partnership.
For the last few years, Apple has been investigating making autonomous cars, even though this is well outside its core competency of computers and their accessories.
The move leaves many observers scratching their heads, but a pair of analysts put together reasons why self-driving automobiles should be Apple’s next product category.
Apple’s self-driving shuttle bus project has finally found a car manufacturer to work with.
After being spurned by BMW and Mercedes, Apple has inked a deal with Volkswagen that will allow the iPhone-maker to turn some of its T6 vans into self-driving shuttles for employees.
Apple still hasn’t publicly announced its plans when it comes to autonomous cars. However, in the meantime it continues to grow its fleet of self-driving test cars — which are now the second largest in the state of California.
At present, Apple has 55 self-driving vehicles that it is testing on public roads. That’s up from just three in April 2017, little over one year ago. In March this year, that number was at 45. Apple lags only behind GM Cruise, which has 104 test vehicles on the road.
April 22, 2013: The world gets its first Apple car. Well, kind of.
In reality, the iBeetle is a collaboration with German carmaker Volkswagen that offers a car “stylistically linked” to Apple. This means Apple-inspired colors, a built-in docking station for your iPhone, and a special app that lets you control the car’s features.
Apple is revving up its efforts to catch its competitors in the self-driving car market.
The company has aggressively expanded its fleet of vehicles used to test its autonomous driving systems, according to a new filing that shows the company added nine times as many cars over the last year.
Apple is investigating new ways to make self-driving care systems drive more like humans, based on a recent patent filing from the iPhone-maker.
The USPTO finally published Apple’s first patent application related to autonomous vehicle systems today, giving some insight into the strategies Apple might use to make its mark in the emerging self-driving car market.
Apple may have just reignited rumors about its Apple Car ambitions by publishing an online research paper — describing how neural networks can be used to detect autonomous car-friendly objects in 3D point clouds.
The results could be used to help improve accuracy in LiDAR technology, in which pulsed laser light is used to measure the distance of objects.
The self-driving sensors that power Apple’s autonomous car have gotten a significant update since the last time we saw them.
Apple’s self-driving car was recently spotted by the CEO of a self-driving car start-up called Voyage. Co-founder MacCallister Higgins got up close with one of Apple’s Lexus RX450h’s that’s outfitted with a monstrous new sensor array. The short video posted to Twitter shows Apple’s project has made some serious strides in the last few months.
Check it out:
