The path ahead appears to be rough for the Apple Car.
The initiative, known as Project Titan and dating back to 2014, has been beset by revolving leaders,’ time wasted on slick demos, and CEO Tim Cook’s lack of commitment to mass production, according to a recent report.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s Top Vice President of Software Engineering, is ‘especially suspicious’ about the initiative, according to a story by The Information based on interviews with 20 corporate employees. Federighi has also expressed his worries to other Apple senior officials.
Cook, who ‘rarely visits’ the project’s offices in Santa Clara, California, has been ‘unwilling to commit to the mass projection of a car,’ according to the article, which has irritated other company leaders.
Project Titan has been led by Ian Goodfellow, Bob Mansfield, Doug Field, and Kevin Lynch at various periods.
At approximately 15 miles per hour, one of Apple’s test vehicles nearly struck a jogger earlier this year.
According to The Information, the car’s algorithms initially recognized the jogger as a “stationary object” before reclassifying it as a “stationary person” and then as a “moving pedestrian.”
Despite this alteration, the car’s course was only marginally altered.
Fortunately, the backup driver slammed on the brakes at the last second, allowing the vehicle to stop a few feet from the jogging.
Apple’s studies suggested that if a person had not interfered, the car “would have almost surely struck the runner.”
Apple allegedly temporarily halted its fleet of test vehicles to investigate the event and added the crossing to its maps database.
A Consumer Reports survey finds that 28 percent of Americans would not contemplate’ purchasing an electric vehicle from Apple, Tesla, or any of the major automakers.
According to Consumer Reports, the most prevalent complaints expressed by this sector were charging, range, and price.
Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive, who was instrumental in the creation of several of the company’s most famous products, is working with the tech giant and has advised the Apple Car team to ‘lean into the quirkiness’ of its design and ‘not try to hide the sensors.’
The Information adds that the car’s current design contains “four seats that face inward so that passengers may converse with one another” and a curving ceiling akin to the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Apple Car designers are experimenting with a trunk compartment that automatically raises and lowers to provide “easier access” to the storage space.
According to a technology news website, they have also studied a design that would allow passengers to “lay flat and sleep in the car.”
The Apple Car team created numerous elegant demonstration videos, including a drone-filmed 40-mile journey through Montana, to demonstrate the project’s development to Cook and other executives.
However, the case also demonstrated how engineers “waste considerable effort choreographing demonstrations” along known routes, demonstrating that the technology works in specified locations but almost nowhere else.
Arun Venkatadri, a former Uber self-driving vehicle developer, told The Information, “If you invest enough money, you can obtain practically any fixed route to work.” What is not demonstrated, however, is the scalability of the self-driving software and its ability to function in a reasonably large region.
The company headquartered in Cupertino, California is still aiming for 2025 for the introduction of its autonomous vehicle.
