It'll take time but they'll get there, but yeah - I know what you mean. This morning I saw someone pulling out of a petrol station...on their phone! Double fail!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Met With California DMV to Review Autonomous Vehicle Regulations
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It'll take time but they'll get there, but yeah - I know what you mean. This morning I saw someone pulling out of a petrol station...on their phone! Double fail!
Cringe! I have the Apple Watch. I got a call yesterday as I was driving. All I have to do while driving is angle my wrist and glance to see who the caller is. It was my parents. I then had the option to tap the watch and take the call as a speaker phone call. But I'm the kind of person who has to focus completely on the road. I only chat when it's an open stretch of country road near my home. My passengers by now know not to chat with me in the congested portion of town because I have to be ready for all sorts of crazy things from other drivers and pedestrians. So I ignored the call and called back when I reached home. Before I had the watch, I had a dash mounted holder for my iPhone and could glance at incoming call numbers that way.
Had it been the school, I would have pulled over into the parking lot of a store and returned the call, as the school calls are time sensitive. It's not rocket science and it's self preservation as well as preserving the lives of people around us. These things can wait for our attention. The conditions on the road in front of you can not.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
So, Google has a car therefore Apple must have a car. How very monkey see/monkey do. Must be all that mystical disruptive innovation coming from Silicon Valley.
An Apple car will be so thin, it will be able to split lanes like a motorbike.
I have to admit I was surprised to read about the public filing requirements by the CA DMV. Given that Apple MUST put the car on the roads at some point, well before it goes on sale to the public, one wonders if Apple may be doing this kind of testing in a state, or a country that has less transparent requirements.
Either way, this does shed some new light on this, much like the FCC requirements which had the original iPhone launched well before it was ready to ship. So any Car could be kept secret right up until they announce it, but not anywhere close to when it would actually ship.
Competition is a great thing for consumers so I'm not going to complain. And the innovation isn't going to come in the form of inventing a new product category in this case, but in inventing the technology that will give the end user the best experience.
I use Google Maps a lot for searching for places to eat or gas stations around the area. Apple Maps is just not as fleshed out as Google Maps in that regard. It doesn't show me all the listings that Google would show. If I don't trust it to show me an accurate result list, it's no good for me.
But bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS, and the battery will still last all day with typical use.
People like to complain. It is good in USA too (at least in my area) and I use it over google.
Google took a long time to get were they are now, but the complainers do not want to give Apple that time.
It will get better and better. Some people just thrive on negativity.
This will all happen, but in small steps. All DMVs will have to make adjustments and the travel will be all at the same official speed.
Most accidents happen due to different speeds.
So, the guy with the Lamborghini *** (put in 4 letter short name for Richard) extender car will in the future just have to go the speed limit like everybody else.
It will be interesting though to see how a mix of cars get along with each other.
In the beginning they may just replace the HOV lanes with autonomous cars to force more people to switch.
In the every end it will have to be a controlled car society with all the same speed, supervised by satellites
and the jail breakers will have to figure out how to go faster by tinkering with the CarOS .
Last edited:
Agreed. Apple can probably keep the design of the car a secret until mass production begins. Prototypes used for street testing will be disguised. We'll have plenty of fan-produced concepts to discuss, but they'll resemble the final product about as much as the iWatch concepts did for the Apple Watch. I expect Apple will have an announcement many months before the first one rolls off the assembly line. Perhaps they will even start taking deposits, as Tesla did, but maybe not, and we'll be glued to the Internet two weeks ahead of time to get our pre-orders in so they can all be delivered on Day One. Yeah, I don't see Apple being able to deliver a million Apple Cars on the same day by UPS. Maybe Apple should stick to the market it knows (smart watches), rather than driving off headlong into unknown territory.
One thing about the self-driving cars I can predict:
1. If they follow the speed limit law, and don't exceed it, that will be bothersome at first, but then when people realize the other things they can do while the car is driving, that won't be much of an issue.
1.a. I predict that the first day of self-driving on the freeways will be the hardest, the first week will end with people doing small tasks (shaving, make-up, checking text messages) with the distractions not so looked down upon. In a month, I think that people will be reading while the car drives, surfing the net, movies, etc.
2. The insurance companies will have an interesting time with this. I think they will demand that an automated data recorder ("black box") is installed so they know if there was a driver caused or automated software caused accident. The political arguments will ensue...
3. Legislators will also have fun with this. I have a feeling there will be a lot of "thou shalt always have the automation on" laws, and "automation lanes" on the freeways, crowding out the non-automated lanes.
4. The first automated car vs. automated car accident will be interesting. Even more so, the automated car vs. non-automated car accident lawsuit will probably go to Federal Courts. The last, and most critical will be the automated car vs. pedestrian accident.
5. In 2040, the non-self driving cars will be like stick shift cars (in the US) are now. Interesting, but mainly for the enthusiasts.
1. If they follow the speed limit law, and don't exceed it, that will be bothersome at first, but then when people realize the other things they can do while the car is driving, that won't be much of an issue.
1.a. I predict that the first day of self-driving on the freeways will be the hardest, the first week will end with people doing small tasks (shaving, make-up, checking text messages) with the distractions not so looked down upon. In a month, I think that people will be reading while the car drives, surfing the net, movies, etc.
2. The insurance companies will have an interesting time with this. I think they will demand that an automated data recorder ("black box") is installed so they know if there was a driver caused or automated software caused accident. The political arguments will ensue...
3. Legislators will also have fun with this. I have a feeling there will be a lot of "thou shalt always have the automation on" laws, and "automation lanes" on the freeways, crowding out the non-automated lanes.
4. The first automated car vs. automated car accident will be interesting. Even more so, the automated car vs. non-automated car accident lawsuit will probably go to Federal Courts. The last, and most critical will be the automated car vs. pedestrian accident.
5. In 2040, the non-self driving cars will be like stick shift cars (in the US) are now. Interesting, but mainly for the enthusiasts.
A manual override is a critical function for that. It'll be interesting to see how much time you spend in those scenarios vs. highway driving, where the automation will shine.
I'm guessing there were a lot of people saying the same thing when Henry Ford tried to replace horses e.g. Too fast, uncontrollable like horse, dangerous, etc..... Luckily, some people are determined to push the human race forward!
I guess the Apple Car, if it ever actually happens, will be up there with the Apple Watch Edition in terms of the clientele for the product. I just don't see an Apple Car ever becoming a mass market product. Perhaps Apple doesn't intend for it to be.
I feel that the first users of autonomous vehicles may well be the elderly. Based on what happened with my parents generation, I expect I have about about another 15 year of driving in me (parents, aunts & uncles all had to give up driving in their early 80s). Hopefully autonomous vehicles will be available for the mass market by then. An autonomous vehicle would permit the elderly to have greater independence for as long as they could physically get into and out of a vehicle. Even if society had to subsidize the vehicle to some degree (or provide a pool of shared autonomous vehicles for the elderly), it still would be a lot cheaper than putting people into a nursing homes prematurely.
A second use may be for chronic drunks and other repeat traffic offenders. A judge could sentence them to using only autonomous vehicles in fully autonomous mode (the vehicle would have to be locked down in that mode). This would allow the offenders to still get to work and back, etc ., and it would be a lot cheaper for society than jailing them.
A second use may be for chronic drunks and other repeat traffic offenders. A judge could sentence them to using only autonomous vehicles in fully autonomous mode (the vehicle would have to be locked down in that mode). This would allow the offenders to still get to work and back, etc ., and it would be a lot cheaper for society than jailing them.
Maybe the spaceship campus design is really intended to hide a race track underneath it for car testing. 
I think it's pretty clear that right now it is to do everything that it can to PREVENT an accident while staying within it's parameters, the lane. It has no way of knowing what's beyond the lane next to it. I has no idea what children are, adults, or statues shaped as people.
Best idea is to keep it within those confines of it's lane or possibly change lanes if no other car is detected. But most importantly is to have the cars mesh networked so they're actively talking to the ones in it's immediate vicinity. As googls has found out, it doesn't matter if you have the perfect self driving car, if you can anticipate another cars moves, there will ALWAYS be a chance of a fatal error.
As much as people hate Detroit, the city and surrounding areas how a lot of sensors built into the roads for Autonomous car research. Perhaps apple should consider a Detroit Michigan facility.
Thanks, really interesting.
In case you think I'm negative, please... NO.....
I LOVE and ADORE new technology and, if I could afford it, which I can't I would LOVE to own a true driverless car.
I predict a whole seismic shift in people's use of cars once this happens.
For 90%+ of people there simply will be no reason to own a car at all.
A few years ago, they could have just purchased Detroit outright.