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Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley, and is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it, the Guardian has learned. Documents show the oft-rumoured Apple car project appears to be further along than many suspected.
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.
In correspondence obtained by the Guardian under a public records act request, Apple engineer Frank Fearon wrote: “We would ... like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it].”
Automobile manufacturing is a radical departure from Apple's core business. Can they pull it off?
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Sunday August 16 2015, @02:39AM
I don't see why they need an actual self driving car in order to develop entertainment for one.
Perhaps they are looking ahead. Entertainment is good, but the barrier of entry is quite low. They know it better than anyone, having lost the smartphone market to a newcomer who had *nothing* when Apple already had the iOS and the product.
The future market of robotic vehicles is HUGE. It will be also highly concentrated in a few hands - primarily in hands of the first entrants. This is because there will be thousands of patents, thousands of specific code fragments, thousands of special algorithms - and lots of training data that is necessary for safe operation of a vehicle.
Yet another tall barrier of entry will be in financial responsibility and insurance. A newcomer, who has no statistics and no proof of safety of their vehicles, may be required to pay terrible premiums for the privilege of selling their autonomous vehicles. At the same time OEMs who were in it from the early days grew into the system gradually and painlessly; as matter of fact, they were in control of the laws and the rules at that time. Apple and Google are exactly the software behemoths who can develop two independent, but similar, software platforms for robot cars. This will create competition. Otherwise an autonomous vehicle will cost $10K in hardware + $50K in software, and there is nothing you can do about it, as no individual - and not even every large company - can develop their own driving software that will be permitted to operate on public roads. Apple wants to be among the early developers. It's just funny that Microsoft, as always, does not think about it. They are too busy destroying themselves.