According to reports quoting sources, Apple Inc is planning to continue to press ahead with development of self-driving car technology and has set a target of 2024 to develop a passenger vehicle w3hihc could be made with its own breakthrough battery technology.
Since 2014, the self-driving project of the iPhone maker, known as Project Titan, has not been a smooth sailing for the company as it attempted to design and develop technologies on its own from scratch. Apple even retracted its attention from the project at one point in time to focus on development of software and reviewed its goals for self driving vehicle development.
In 2018, the project was headed by Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, and the team shed as many as off 190 people in 2019.
The company has since made advancements to the extent that it is now in a position to build its own self driving vehicle for consumers, said quoting sources. The target of Apple to build a driverless vehicle for the mass market is different from what its rivals are trying to achieve. For example, the self-driving project called Waymo of Alphabet Inc is aimed to build robo-taxis for carrying passengers for a driverless ride-hailing service.
According to reports quoting sources, a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the range of vehicles is at the core of Apple’s strategy.
There was no comment in the reports available from Apple.
However even for a company like Apple, that has huge financial resources and manufactures hundreds of millions of electronics products each year with the help of suppliers from all over the world, building a self driving vehicles is a huge supply chain challenge. The challenge assumes greater importance because the company has never made a car. Just to compare, it was not before 17 years that the United States based leading electric car maker Tesla could make profits in a sustained manner,
“If there is one company on the planet that has the resources to do that, it’s probably Apple. But at the same time, it’s not a cellphone,” said reports quoting sources.
The question of who would be assembling an Apple-branded car is still not clear. Reports quoting sources however said that it is likely that the company will have to rely on a manufacturing partner to churn out vehicles. And some have even talked about Apple choosing to integrate its driverless vehicle technology with a car that is made by a traditional auto maker instead of the iPhone maker building and bringing to market its own car.
There were also sources who warned that the 2024 deadline could be shifted to 2025 because of the pandemic induced delays and slowdown.
For development of elements of the system, including lidar sensors, which help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road, Apple has also decided to tap outside partners.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
Since 2014, the self-driving project of the iPhone maker, known as Project Titan, has not been a smooth sailing for the company as it attempted to design and develop technologies on its own from scratch. Apple even retracted its attention from the project at one point in time to focus on development of software and reviewed its goals for self driving vehicle development.
In 2018, the project was headed by Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, and the team shed as many as off 190 people in 2019.
The company has since made advancements to the extent that it is now in a position to build its own self driving vehicle for consumers, said quoting sources. The target of Apple to build a driverless vehicle for the mass market is different from what its rivals are trying to achieve. For example, the self-driving project called Waymo of Alphabet Inc is aimed to build robo-taxis for carrying passengers for a driverless ride-hailing service.
According to reports quoting sources, a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the range of vehicles is at the core of Apple’s strategy.
There was no comment in the reports available from Apple.
However even for a company like Apple, that has huge financial resources and manufactures hundreds of millions of electronics products each year with the help of suppliers from all over the world, building a self driving vehicles is a huge supply chain challenge. The challenge assumes greater importance because the company has never made a car. Just to compare, it was not before 17 years that the United States based leading electric car maker Tesla could make profits in a sustained manner,
“If there is one company on the planet that has the resources to do that, it’s probably Apple. But at the same time, it’s not a cellphone,” said reports quoting sources.
The question of who would be assembling an Apple-branded car is still not clear. Reports quoting sources however said that it is likely that the company will have to rely on a manufacturing partner to churn out vehicles. And some have even talked about Apple choosing to integrate its driverless vehicle technology with a car that is made by a traditional auto maker instead of the iPhone maker building and bringing to market its own car.
There were also sources who warned that the 2024 deadline could be shifted to 2025 because of the pandemic induced delays and slowdown.
For development of elements of the system, including lidar sensors, which help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road, Apple has also decided to tap outside partners.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
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