Apple Puts Brakes on Self-driving Car Project, Report Says (theguardian.com)

Apple is following the road taken by Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet, and downshifting on its still-unannounced self-driving car project, according to a report in the New York Times. From a report: The company has been working on its automotive technology under the internal code name "Project Titan" since at least 2014, and once intended to build its own vehicle from start to finish, creating a true "Apple Car." Now it's put the car-building side of the project on hold, perhaps indefinitely, as it instead focuses on creating and perfecting the software and hardware necessary to get a self-driving car on the streets. Apple is now planning on working with other car-makers to get its self-driving tech into the garages and driveways of customers, according to the paper. One upcoming example of that collaboration: an autonomous shuttle service that will ferry employees back and forth between the company's Silicon Valley offices in Palo Alto and Cupertino. That project, which will use conventional cars with self-driving kit bolted on, is known as "Pail", standing for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, the street address of the company's main campus. The name highlights the delays in the project, since Apple's main campus is already in the process of being moved to Apple Park, an enormous ring-shaped office down the road.

Comments

So they finally realized they went too far?

[Opportunist]

That's what you get when you remove and remove features, at one point you might remove one that is crucial.

In the name of pedestrians everywhere, thanks for putting the brakes back onto your damn cars!

Re:So they finally realized they went too far?

[denzacar]

Knowing Apple's penchant for blowing things out of proportion when labeling them teleporter would turn out to be a 4K TV.
With round edges, a single USB port, a single proprietary port yet to be announced - and a high definition camera so you can "teleport" into other people's homes.
White version will cost extra.

Smart Enough to know a bad idea

[boudie2]

More and more people are coming to the conclusion that the "self driving" or autonomous car is still many years in the future. It's like the flying car. What if something goes wrong? You're f#@ked.

Re:Smart Enough to know a bad idea

[phantomfive]

Autonomous cars need to be at SAE level 4 (otherwise they are not autonomous). Currently self-driving technology is at SAE level 3, which means a human has to be constantly ready to take over. It looks like we're going to need actual algorithmic advances before a car can reach SAE level 4.

It seems likely that autonomous cars could lower that number significantly.

This is definitely true, but getting to SAE level 4 is required. At SAE level 3, the driver needs to sit there babysitting the vehicle, which is a worse user experience than actually driving yourself.

Re:Smart Enough to know a bad idea

[bws111]

Cruise control relieves you of one task. You are still driving the car. Having the car do everything is much worse, I think, because now you have nothing to do but sit there and watch. You can't perform any other tasks like you could if you were a passenger, and you aren't occupying yourself doing anything except sitting their waiting for the computer to screw up.

Strikes me as having parallels with 'Apple TV'

[bfwebster]

Remember that for quite some time, the rumor was that Apple was going to release its own line of TV sets. Many people (including myself) thought that was a stupid idea, since it would put Apple into the TV manufacturing business, which is pretty cutthroat.

I think the same problems occur with the concept of Apple building its own self-driving car, except that car manufacturing is far more complex, capital-intensive, and labor-intensive than building TV sets, while still being just as cutthroat (note that US car mfgrs are dealing with slowing sales and mounting inventory). So, Apple's move is, generally speaking, a sane one.

On the other hand, Apple has largely blown its approach to the actual Apple TV to date (I own two and am a fan, but I love my Echo and Dot more), so who knows what it will achieve on the automotive front.