In his recent podcast interview with Kara Swisher, Apple CEO Tim Cook teased some interesting plans to develop the autonomous tech for the highly-anticipated Apple Car. It wasn’t immediately clear if Cook was referring to the self-driving technology or the hardware or both.
Here is what Cook told Swisher about the mysterious Apple Car in the making:
“The autonomy itself is a core technology, in my view. If you sort of step back, the car, in a lot of ways, is a robot. An autonomous car is a robot. And so there’s lots of things you can do with autonomy. And we’ll see what Apple does.”
Project Titan – Mysterious Apple Car
One closer look at what hints he dropped, suggests Project Titan is definitely underway and Apple appears to be developing an iPhone on wheels or tech that could drive Apple’s own car.
Going by Apple’s history of developing its own hardware along with software and services, it seems like Tesla will finally have a challenger in the form of an Apple Car.
As Tech Crunch reports, the company’s mass layoffs in 2019 had put the Project Titan under great risk of failure. However, the latest reports indicate that the project is still alive and kicking with plans to unleash Apple’s own self-driving electric car by 2024.
Earlier this year in February, Apple had been in talks with Hyundai-Kia to build an Apple-branded self-driving car; but the deal failed to materialise, according to Bloomberg.
Apple Car – Robotaxi or Passenger Car
There have been fresh rumours and reports about Apple’s relentless pursuit for building a self-driving car in the footsteps of Tesla. However, it is unclear if Apple is designing a robotaxi, a goods carrier or a passenger car in its bid to outsmart Tesla.
“I’ve never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he’s built,” said Cook while drawing comparison with Tesla’s autonomous cars.
“I think Tesla has done an unbelievable job of not only establishing the lead, but keeping the lead for such a long period of time in the EV space. So I have great appreciation for them,” he adds.
Apple Learns from Tesla’s Mistakes
Apple is all geared up towards learning from Tesla’s mistakes and shortcomings as the latter’s autonomous tech has failed to do justice to its autopilot feature, owing to inherent bugs and flaws within the system.
Tesla has made it clear that its self-driving cars still need the driver’s total attention in order to avert potential accidents due to hazards or other emergency situations. Consequently, Apple could be researching on the safety and convenience front, which is seriously lacking with Tesla’s cars due to software limitations.
