Apple Inc is accelerating development of its electric car and is refocusing the project around full self-driving capabilities and solving a technical challenge that has bedeviled the auto industry, people familiar with the matter said.
For the past several years, Apple’s car team has explored two paths: creating a model with limited self-driving capabilities focused on steering and acceleration — similar to many current cars — or a version with full self-driving ability that does not require human intervention.
Under the effort’s new leader — Apple Watch software executive Kevin Lynch — engineers are now concentrating on the second option, the sources said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
It is just the latest shift for the car effort, known as the Special Projects Group or “Project Titan,” which has endured strategy changes and executive turnover since about 2014. In September, the former head of the team, Doug Field, left for a job at Ford Motor Co after three years in charge. In picking Lynch as his replacement, Apple went with an internal executive who is not a car veteran.
In trying to master self-driving cars, Apple is chasing a holy grail within the industry. Tech and auto giants have spent years on autonomous vehicles, but the capabilities have remained elusive.
Tesla Inc, the market leader in electric vehicles, is probably years away from offering fully autonomous cars; Alphabet Inc’s Waymo has suffered a rash of departures in its efforts to develop the technology; and Uber Technologies Inc agreed to sell off its autonomous-driving division last year.
Apple is internally targeting a launch of its self-driving car in four years, faster than the five to seven-year timeline that some engineers had been planning for earlier this year. However, the timing is fluid, and hitting a 2025 target is dependent on the company’s ability to complete the self-driving system — an ambitious task on that schedule. If Apple is unable to reach its goal, it could either delay a release or initially sell a car with lesser technology.
Apple’s ideal car would have no steering wheel and pedals, and its interior would be designed around hands-off driving. One option discussed inside the company features an interior similar to the one in the Lifestyle Vehicle from Canoo Inc, an upstart in the EV industry. In that car, passengers sit along the sides of the vehicle and face each other as they would in a limousine.
Apple has also explored designs where the car’s information and entertainment system — likely a large iPad-like touch screen — would be in the middle of the vehicle, letting users interact with it throughout a ride. The car would be heavily integrated with Apple’s existing services and devices. Although the company is pushing to not have a standard steering wheel, Apple has discussed equipping the car with an emergency takeover mode.
Recently, the company reached a key milestone in developing the car’s underlying self-driving system, the sources said. Apple believes it has completed much of the core work on the processor it intends to eventually ship in the first generation of the car.
The chip was designed by Apple’s silicon engineering group — which devised processors for the iPhone, iPad and Mac — rather than within the car team itself. The work has included honing the underlying software that runs on the chip to power the self-driving capabilities.
The advancements could soon make their way into road tests. Apple plans to start using the new processor design and updated self-driving sensors in retrofitted cars that it has spent years testing in California. The company currently has a fleet of 69 Lexus SUVs experimenting with its technology, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles said.
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