The world first heard about Apple’s self-driving car project, codenamed Titan, way back in 2015. However, half a decade on with no “one more thing” announcement, and Apple fans could be forgiven for starting to give up hope of ever hopping behind the wheel of their very own Apple Car.
What’s Happening With Apple’s Self-Driving Car?
A new report by Bloomberg gives an update, however—and, no, Apple hasn’t thrown in the towel on building a self-driving car. Instead, it has reportedly moved its autonomous driving unit under the leadership of John Giannandrea, the ex-Google employee who now heads up Apple’s AI efforts.
Bloomberg writes that the “hundreds of engineers” on the project, which is run on a day-today basis by Apple VP of Special Projects Doug Field, are now working under the watchful eye of Giannandrea.
Alongside Titan, Giannandrea oversees Siri and various machine learning projects at Apple.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence have been a growing area of focus for Apple over the past few years, and it may be that those in charge simply thought it was a good idea to bring autonomous vehicles under the leadership of its resident AI expert.
The move also reflects the retirement of previous Titan overlord Bob Mansfield, who Doug Field previously reported to. Mansfield retired from Apple initially in 2012, but returned for less than a year to focus on chip technology, before leaving that role in 2013. Since then, he has been employed as a part-time consultant at Apple.
According to Bloomberg, Mansfield has now retired completely.
When Will You Be Able to Drive an Apple Car?
The ultimate form that an Apple vehicle could take isn’t completely known. During the few years the project has been an active one, there have been plenty of reasons to be either optimistic or pessimistic about the prospects of an Apple Car arriving in the near future.
2001 – iPod
2007 – iPhone
2010 – iPad
2015 – Apple Watch
….
It’s been 5 years without Apple releasing a new breakthrough product… Any guesses when and what the next one will be?#iphone #ipod #ipad #applewatch #apple #applecar #appleglasses— Michael Robert (@MichaelRobert) December 5, 2020
In January 2019, CNBC reported that Apple had laid off more than 200 employees from the project. But a few months later, in June of that year, Apple snapped up the autonomous vehicle startup Drive.ai.
Apple could conceivably develop a fully fledged consumer vehicle, hardware and all. Or it could develop a software-based solution that could be adopted by other manufacturers, a bit like a self-driving CarPlay.
The idea of Apple moving into the automotive sphere would be Apple’s biggest shift since it dropped the name “Computers” from its title and started building iPhones. Still, after the roaring success Tesla has enjoyed in 2020, there’s definitely a good business case for following suit.