14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has just confirmed that the company is working on self-driving car software, after years of rumors claiming the Cupertino-based iPhone maker was building an autonomous vehicle.
“We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. Autonomy is something that’s incredibly exciting for us, but we’ll see where it will take us. We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we’ll do, but we’re being straightforward that it’s a core technology we view as very important,” Tim Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg.
While Tim Cook’s statement does confirm Apple’s interest in self-driving cars, it also set things straight as to how the technology company is looking to expand in the automotive market.
Previously, it was believed that Apple wanted to build a full car that would wear its logo, but the focus has in the meantime switched to a more doable project that involves only the software side of such a vehicle.
An electric car competing against Tesla
Apple already has the know-how to develop software that would power a driver-less car, and using the company’s latest investments in AI, it can continue the development of more advanced technology that would in the end make its way to a vehicle manufactured by a currently unknown automotive partner.
Apple’s efforts to expand in the automotive market have already been linked to a number of car manufacturers, but up until now, no clear evidence was provided on any potential collaboration with an automaker.
The first time Apple’s possible investment in a car-related project made the rounds was in 2014 when people familiar with the matter pointed to internal work called Project Titan and whose final goal was to bring an Apple car to the market.
Furthermore, Apple hired a team of more than 1,000 engineers and car experts from top manufacturers in Germany and in other European countries to work on its project, but more recently, the company dismantled the group to switch focus to software.
Oddly enough, Apple was even believed to be eyeing a rival to Tesla’s electric cars, but the focus has now switched to a project that makes more sense on the long term and which should be finalized by 2021.
Specifics are not available at this point, but Apple has recently been granted a permit to test self-driving cars in California, which could be an indication that the project has already reached an advanced stage.