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I seriously doubt this thing will ever get made. No steering wheel or break pedal, or any kind of manual control will never be street legal. Tesla's autopilot already has a killcount. Doesn't matter if Apple can actually get it to work, because after Tesla's screwups and other factors no government body will ever approve it.
 
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This is a vision of the far future; likely a time past Cook; the strangeness of the car-use paradigm shifts sounds a lot like an Ive thing so I'm not surprised he was mentioned. Ive does not live in the same world I do. Obviously certain technologies require decades of testing so it makes sense that the project moves in the background. To be fair, Apple probably has a bunch of background projects. I think we were more likely to see a physical Apple TV for the living room before anything like a car. There is a possibility that drivers may be able to install custom operating systems for their cars and of course Apple does have a step in that direction.
 
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Things are moving to drive/brake/steer by wire anyway, so no physical steering wheel or brake is really necessary. Look at all the things you can control with your iPhone or PS5 controller etc. that are much more advanced than an auto.

That said I don't think while healthy I'd ever buy a vehicle that I couldn't physically "drive" without them, as I actually like physically driving. I miss my manual transmission vehicles as I always had one for my first ~35 years of driving. I finally had to give it up to go electric (my current and previous vehicles have been Teslas even though I have zero interest in FSD and rarely even use autopilot or "cruise control").
 
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Looks like they're leaning into the Minority Report type of automated vehicles. iRobot had the sense to keep the steering wheel and pedals so the robots couldn't control everything. I wonder what John Connor would have to say about this.

I would guess that Apple Car is more like a monorail or cable car (ropeway) kinda transport, which has is self-driving, no steering wheel and no brake, the passengers sit facing each other, just that Apple Car will be on a road instead of a cable/track.
 
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I would guess that Apple Car is more like a monorail or cable car (ropeway) kinda transport, which has is self-driving, no steering wheel and no brake, the passengers sit facing each other, just that Apple Car will be on a road instead of a cable/track.
I more realistic way of think of it is a self-driving taxi.
 
This sounds hideous, ridiculously expensive, incredibly impractical, unsafe, and prone to breaking down and requiring very expensive fixes.

Knowledge is being able to make the described vehicle in the first place.
Wisdom is watching and learning from Tesla's struggles with the Model X and initial Model 3 and then subsequent success with later Model 3 and Y, then replicating the success while avoiding the struggles.

Musk has been very open about the mistakes Tesla made with the design of the X and early production of the 3. The X has too many motors and sensors involved with opening the doors, leading to making it very expensive to produce and unreliable for too little benefit. Apple's idea of a trunk that raises and lowers sounds like a repeat of that mistake - minimal benefit that'll be expensive and unreliable.

Apple needs somebody willing to say No to hundreds of good ideas so they only have a few Great ideas.
 
I can see this product work as a type of shuttle service which runs specific paths back and forth. Say between the Apple headquarters and San Francisco. That limits the amount of roads it can travel on, and assistive equipment can be installed enroute to increase safety. The allowed paths can be increased over time, and thus coverage is extended.

It must be something other than a traditional car and that's one way of rolling out a service in a (somewhat) safe manner.
 
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Lean towards weirdness? Tell Ive to **** off. Every rumor I hear about this thing leads me more and more to conclude this is what they're going for:
 
If Apple is going for a genuine driverless car, where it turns up to your door and someone who cannot legally drive can get in and sleep until they reach their destination, then this is decades away. at least 4 or 5 decades. We're so far away from the kind of AI that can do this, let alone the infrastructure or even the legislation required to support this.

Sure you could have a specific road in one part of (probably California) that gives a trial license on one route, but sharing a lane with manually driven cars is a legal minefield, so even then it would have to be dedicated route like a busway.

Every year we're told a self-driving car is 2-3 years away. Especially by folks like Musk who want us to buy into the idea that it's just around the corner with a software update. It isn't.
Infrastructure is an important point. I live in a wealthy county in a wealthy state with a very well funded transportation department and still every car and truck we own has needed a tire replacement or repair almost on an annual basis because the potholes and road debris keep putting holes in them.

It’s been this bad for so long that a lot of people I know opt for tougher sport utility vehicles for family transportation instead of the typical mini van for the school run, that’s how crappy driving conditions are around here.

There’s just too much of the population living in conditions that aren’t whatever they have going on in Cupertino and Apple, I am sure, is aware of that. That being said, it does sound like this is service oriented and not meant for the average person/family to own individually. And for all I know they may be hoping to sell these big in other countries that are more oriented to public transportation in both infrastructure and cultural attitudes.

I do think they’re closer to getting this vehicle out there somehow, some way, than any of us are going to be comfortable with.
 
a vehicle without a steering wheel and brake pedal
No. Just effing no! First, as always I question the rumor mill because it is so often more full of 💩than a manure factory. But no, you have to have a "pilot" (driver) overseeing the entire trip. Commercial airlines have autopilot capability, but at least one seasoned pilot is always tasked to monitor the flight. From what I’ve read and heard, most air crashes related to autopilot failure are because the pilots were not monitoring as they should have been, or the system had bugs. This is Apple, there will be BUGS! At 30,000 feet they have a lot of time to regain control and avoid other aircraft. On a highway we have almost no time to regain control, much less avoid other cars. I can foresee automated, and mostly driverless, systems that could work somewhat on rails (tracks). But on regular roads these systems are just too dangerous. And this is definitely one system that Jony I’ve needs to be kept far away from. Function first and foremost!
 
Man, Ive’s departure is one of the best things to happen to Apple in the last years. He was instrumental in the early stages, but once the technology matured he was a menace with his style-over-function approach.
Right, because nobody every complained about style over function when Steve Jobs was alive. If this report was about Musk and Tesla everyone here would be hailing him as a visionary genius and Apple a boring company that does nothing but incremental updates to existing products. 🙄
 
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Things are moving to drive/brake/steer by wire anyway, so no physical steering wheel or brake is really necessary. Look at all the things you can control with your iPhone or PS5 controller etc. that are much more advanced than an auto.
[citation needed]
 
Considering his butterfly keyboard and other stupid stuff he did, he went off the deep end a good while ago.
That pretentious prick has long stopped being relevant.
There wasn’t anyone else inside the company testing or using the butterfly keyboard? When the 12” MacBook was announced Phil Schiller got up on stage and made a big deal about this new keyboard design. I call BS on ONE person being responsible for ANYTHING Apple releases.
 
The only way we will see mass autonomous vehicles is if either 1. They have their own lane/road or 2. All vehicles are autonomous. You can easily control the flow of vehicles if they are all part of the one system but mix those with normal drivers and you asking for trouble.
 
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