Apple Met With California DMV to Review Autonomous Vehicle Regulations

[AZREOSpecialist]

Apple isn't making a car. They haven't hired anyone with any familiarity with vehicle manufacturing and have made no moves towards manufacturing. Furthermore, a vehicle would require a national service and sales network. Apple would have to establish all new retail and service infrastructure nationally. None of that is happening. There is no car.

 

[RedNibs]

I don't get the Apple Maps hate. Is it just here in Australia that it's good?

I find Apple maps more accurate than Google Maps. Don't understand the negativity either, unless it's generic Apple bashing.

 

[pat500000]

No thanks. Apple can't even get iOS and OS X to work properly... What makes them think they could pull this off. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple cars got into accident because there's is a computer glitch?

 

[bstpierre]

Apple isn't making a car. They haven't hired anyone with any familiarity with vehicle manufacturing and have made no moves towards manufacturing. Furthermore, a vehicle would require a national service and sales network. Apple would have to establish all new retail and service infrastructure nationally. None of that is happening. There is no car.

A vehicle only requires a national retail and service infrastructure if it is being sold nationally. If you are only offering it in California you only need sales and service in California, for example.

 

[Piggie]

The point is...............

If cars think for themselves, drive themselves, then in effect why "Own a car" ?

You just call for a car to come pick you up and take you somewhere, and the car does the job without any human being involved.

No need to worry about cost of buying a car, maintaining it, Insurance and other costs.
Cars will just become cheap taxi's, but tens of thousands of them.

Would you buy a car, and have it sit in a car park all day, or in your driveway all evening and night, when it could be out, by itself earning you money?

Think about it:

How long, during a week are people actually physically driving a car?
1 hour a day, if that.

Why buy a car? Just call for one when needed.

Major changes ahead. Car ownership will take on a totally new idea.
More change than people currently think there will be.

 

[bstpierre]

Couldn't Apple simply be trying to build a carOS instead of an actual car? Seems like it would still take the kind of hiring they have been reported to have done, still require a test facility AND would make a heck of a lot more sense than building the "car" part of the car. Apple doesn't make hard drives and motherboards but they use them in their products right? I say this whole thing is about a controller/OS for a car, rather than the car itself. Am I splitting hairs? Maybe, but I just don't see an Apple Car in the future.

Automakers operate the same way. They don't necessarily make their own parts, especially more complicated parts. Companies like Tesla hire companies to make their parts for them or buy customized versions of off the shelf parts.

 

[bstpierre]

This is what the CEO of Dailmer said the other day:



Anyone who thinks current car companies will give over their dashboard to Apple (or Google) is living in fantasy land.

Microsoft currently operates Ford's dashboard with MyFordTouch.

 

[Flight Plan]

This will happen. But California won't do it. Too many regulations.

 

[filmantopia]

Can they accurately reproduce realistic driving scenarios on that 2100 acre test facility? I would think it's hard to reproduce kids playing in the street, people walking animals, busy crowds in a downtown area, etc, without actually going out on public roads.

Maybe Apple, with hundreds of the brightest engineers and auto experts around will forget to properly test for things crossing the road!

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Perhaps a compact car.

 

[medazinol]

One does not develop a car from scratch that fast. The reporting is rather optimistic. At best Apple might have a really rough test mule with sensors and software. Not a finished product by any stretch. Project Titan was only Green lit last year after all. I takes 4-6 years to develop a car from a clean sheet and knowing Apple this is exactly what they're doing.

 

[saintforlife]

Here is one Apple product Unbox Therapy can't bend.

 

[69Mustang]

Microsoft currently operates Ford's dashboard with MyFordTouch.

The key your missing is MyFordTouch is device ecosystem agnostic. Daimler guy was referencing Apple and Google specifically because their offerings are geared to work with their respective ecosystems. Personally, I think he's 100% right. I wouldn't want my vehicle choice influenced by what phone I carry.

 

[Keirasplace]

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.

Or maybe Apple's been working on this for 3 years and instead of yapping about it like Google, they keep it under wrap.. Like well, always.

Google likes to yap like a little dog about its "plans".

 

[Keirasplace]

In his defense, in the 50's they thought we'd be living in space by now.

Thinking you could live in space shortly was stupid, beyond stupid at that time, and any real scientist would have said so. But, hey, people have to dream hey... This, though is a natural evolution of current tech. Only social and cultural obstacles remain.

 

[Keirasplace]

One does not develop a car from scratch that fast. The reporting is rather optimistic. At best Apple might have a really rough test mule with sensors and software. Not a finished product by any stretch. Project Titan was only Green lit last year after all. I takes 4-6 years to develop a car from a clean sheet and knowing Apple this is exactly what they're doing.

While its been "greenlit" last year, nobody really think Apple doesn't have skunkwork type internal research on load of stuff going on way before that. You don't hire 1000 people within 18 months, just because... You've done some groundwork before that. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the small firms they bought in the last 2-3 years were already related to potentially going that way.

The reason we now know about it is that they seemingly have moved from systems and software (a place were they can keep this under wrap), to full size prototypes and even early manufacturing studies (this shows in who they hired).

 

[wigby]

I don't get the Apple Maps hate. Is it just here in Australia that it's good?

It totally depends where you are. Anyone saying Apple Maps in the US sucks is probably lying. I've been using it for years and have many friends and family that do the same and have never heard of any issues with turn-by-turn. The search for businesses isn't as good as Google and until yesterday there was no transit directions but I always prefer Apple Maps for daily use.

 

[wigby]

No way at all will this be working by 2020

2050 more like.
We are a million miles away from the scenario the media is painting.
There is so much public attitude to change, irrespective of the laws.

We don't have anything approaching a proper AI system, which you need long before you think about putting it into a car.

Remember. No need for any pedestrian areas to cross the road, all these cars will stop the moment a pedestrian steps out into the road.
Stand in front of the car/truck/lorry etc = the car is not going anywhere.

People will just play games with them as they know there is no driver inside to get out and go mad at you.

People WILL smash them, esp if their living depends on driving.
And that's even if they could cope with real driving conditions, which they can't.

They will need to break the law also to keep traffic flowing as people do all day every day.

The only realistic way to get anything working soon is to build special areas for such vehicles to use.

We already have semi-autonomous vehicles in public that work fine so it depends on your definition. Will there be autonomous vehicles without any humans in them? Probably not for at least 10 years depending on legislation. But there will absolutely be autonomous vehicles for sale and in use in 5-10 years on public roads. They may only represent .1% of all vehicles because people are scared of change but once accident statistics drop and people see that autonomous vehicles are actually cheaper than today's cars, they will slowly migrate over.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

By the time this 'Apple Car' is out Apple Maps will be on par with Google Maps, possibly even better.

You know when you answer that question about sending data on an app to the software company that lets them make the software better?

Imagine that with 5,000 then 5,000,000 cars doing that.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

We already have semi-autonomous vehicles in public that work fine so it depends on your definition. Will there be autonomous vehicles without any humans in them? Probably not for at least 10 years depending on legislation. But there will absolutely be autonomous vehicles for sale and in use in 5-10 years on public roads. They may only represent .1% of all vehicles because people are scared of change but once accident statistics drop and people see that autonomous vehicles are actually cheaper than today's cars, they will slowly migrate over.

That happened in the 80's with airbags. When Lee Iacocca read about a head on accident where both cars had airbags in them, and both drivers survived with minor injuries, he ordered them in all Chrysler cars.

 

[thekeyring]

Lots of talk about how safe you can make driverless cars. I can't remember where I first heard this argument, but it really struck me: Driverless cars don't have to be error-free. They just have to be less prone to errors than cars with human drivers for roads to become safer. That's a much easier goal.

 

[redhawk87]

I know there is a lot of rumors around an "Apple car" and it's likely they are at least toying with the idea, but I just don't see why Apple would go this route. Yes, self-driving cars are big news right now and a lot of apple's competitors are looking into it, but it doesn't seem like it fits into apples image. I think it's the same reason they never made a TV. Now, CarPlay makes sense to me. Maybe a Siri supported auto-drive feature in CarPlay? Your car (no matter the make and model) is driven by Siri. You connect your phone and tell Siri where to go.

 

[doelcm82]

The point is...............

If cars think for themselves, drive themselves, then in effect why "Own a car" ?

You just call for a car to come pick you up and take you somewhere, and the car does the job without any human being involved.

No need to worry about cost of buying a car, maintaining it, Insurance and other costs.
Cars will just become cheap taxi's, but tens of thousands of them.

Would you buy a car, and have it sit in a car park all day, or in your driveway all evening and night, when it could be out, by itself earning you money?

Think about it:

How long, during a week are people actually physically driving a car?
1 hour a day, if that.

Why buy a car? Just call for one when needed.

Major changes ahead. Car ownership will take on a totally new idea.
More change than people currently think there will be.

I have four kids (a two-year-old, a four-month-old, and next month, twins). Our car will be configured with car seats to carry them all safely. In a couple of years I expect to live in a rural area, far from any likely central hub of available cars with the right configuration.

I do see cars-as-a-service working for certain people (a lot more than now) in certain places (mostly large cities), but the first to embrace it are going to be those who already do a form of it (taxis, limos, etc.). The last to embrace it will be people who need unusual features and those who currently can just get in their car and go, and won't be satisfied with requesting a car and then waiting many minutes or even hours for that car to arrive from some distant repository.

 

[logicstudiouser]

I won't be riding in that if it's using Apple Maps

I second that, since my location is still showing up in the middle of a lake. LOL
Definitely not advisable to rely on Apple Maps if you are outside the US.

 

[dasmb]

Talk about a double standard. I went to the DMV last week and MacRumors didn't report on it AT ALL.