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Documents Indicate Apple Is Building a Self-Driving Car
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian has obtained correspondence through a public records request that indicate Apple is seeking a facility in the San Francisco area to test a self-driving car. "In May, engineers from Apple's secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles." The station is a facility left over from WWII, and its 20 miles of highways and city streets are surrounded by barbed-wire fences. Honda and Mercedes-Benz have already used it to test their self-driving car technology. "This security is bound to appeal to Apple, which has hundreds of engineers quietly working on automotive technologies in an anonymous office building in Sunnyvale, four miles from its main campus in Cupertino."
Unfortunately stock holders don't like companies that rest on their laurels, especially tech companies. The tech industry has also shown us that no matter what the big thing is today, in 15 years it could very well be gone. For as big as the iPod was for Apple, the phone has completely devoured that market. The only way Apple can sit on their hands is if they control a majority of their own shares, otherwise share holders will always demand growth, which is easier for Apple to do in new or emerging markets rather than in their established product markets.
At some point in the future, most or all cars will self-driving and I would imagine that Apple sees themselves as being the purveyor of luxury self-driving cars, much like they target the high-end of the markets in which they exist today. Personally, I think that they'd be better off getting into large household appliances and tackling the smart home problem, but they've probably spent more time analyzing this than your or I have and think that cars represent more value.