Cook doesn't appear to be a fool. I would seriously doubt that this story is completely accurate - particularly the timeline.
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Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025
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Yeah, I don’t see that idea flying with a huge percentage of the American population. People want to grab a wheel and DRIVE. Hence all the performance vehicles out there. Also Americans are control freaks to some extent and entriely trusting software to keep them safe on trackless roads with cross traffic and a mix of non-driverless cars is a BIG ask of people. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon. Nor do I see regulatory bodies allowing that in a lot of places either.
But hey...dream big!
That's quite the leap of logic... never said you had to only live in a city, nor never own a car... just that most current cities - where most people live, yet most people *think* they need a car (autonomous or not) - are a complete mess.
Have you travelled outside the USA? Plenty of countries exist with large cities, small villages, farmland in-between and STILL they can travel around by foot/bicycle for moderate distances, and high quality trains, etc. for longer trips. Unfortunately, there are plenty of countries where they've designed the place around the car... and now they're blinded to the fact there could be any other way.
There is far too much navel gazing & car-centric techno-narcissism in the USA (Hi Elon...), but when you're a hammer (or you're hammer obsessed), you see every problem as a nail. I'd rather an entire toolkit.
Anyway, the jokes on all of us. The future is going to be horrible in 50 years as we are on track to ruin the only habitat we're evolved to live in (nicely accelerated by our obsession with cars over the past 100 years). Nice.
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Well, I disagree - but maybe the key is that you assume there is "no means to take over"
You can have a remote human driver take over in instances where the Apple Car gets locked up in a bad position. It doesn't have to be a passenger. It can be someone "on-call" to take control of the Autonomous people mover Apple Car, and maneuver it to a restart position.
What if the Apple car starts out at Disneyland parking lots as a people mover? There are many use cases for Apple Car to operate Autonomously. It might not be sexy - but maybe Apple Car will be an airport rental car shuttle in the beginning - doing the easiest routes.
Passenger rail is not even remotely an option in a nation the size of the US. Hasn't been since the car was developed. I prefer the autonomy personal transport affords. I don't have to rely on someone else's schedule. Perhaps if I lived in a place like Brooklyn, I might feel differently. The areas I've visited in Europe had limited rail and distances exceeded comfortable bike distance.
Unlikely.
Yeah, good luck with that, Apple. ?? Never gonna happen. And Apple shouldn’t be trying to get into the automotive market. A car freezing up while you’re driving is a completely different thing than an iPhone freezing.
And no steering wheel or pedals? Yeah, right… how are you going to pull into any sort of a parking spot, especially ones that are unmarked like parking on dirt or grass or in a driveway or in a parking structure? is Apple going to require every parking spot in the world to be findable on Apple Maps?? ???
How are you going to drive down unmarked roads or dirt paths or respond to emergencies on the road?
Apple can’t even get Siri to understand 99% of what I say… there’s no chance in hell that they could ever pull this miracle off.
Give it up, Apple.
(It’s also highly likely that these car rumors are just fake news to pump the stock price.)
And no steering wheel or pedals? Yeah, right… how are you going to pull into any sort of a parking spot, especially ones that are unmarked like parking on dirt or grass or in a driveway or in a parking structure? is Apple going to require every parking spot in the world to be findable on Apple Maps?? ???
How are you going to drive down unmarked roads or dirt paths or respond to emergencies on the road?
Apple can’t even get Siri to understand 99% of what I say… there’s no chance in hell that they could ever pull this miracle off.
Give it up, Apple.
(It’s also highly likely that these car rumors are just fake news to pump the stock price.)
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This is what I’m concerned as well, when “your car” is not actually yours, but belongs to government, the manufacturer or even a hacker group. Fully autonomous sounds great but also implies the lost of control. And software bug that will always exist. That too. Anyone wants to see millions of cars somehow malfunction and enter frenzy mode killing everything along their way, because of a software bug?
When I had my truck serviced a few years ago the mechanic said I had a mechanical anti-theft device. He was referring to it being a stick shift. If kids these days don't even have to use a steering wheel and pedals, there is no way they will know how to drive my truck.
I have a 2019 Ford Ranger with the Co-pilot 360 on it. It does things like accident avoidance, lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, etc. It all works pretty good, but... And this is a big but... The minute the snow and ice show up I get sensor errors all the time.
If my vehicle is flying down some ice and snow covered road with low visibility I want a steering wheel and some pedals when those sensors ice over and start malfunctioning. Today's airplanes have extremely advanced autopilot systems with layers of redundancy for reliability, but they still have manual controls for a human to fly them when something goes wrong. Pilots still have to take over controls often. I want the same option in my vehicle.
If my vehicle is flying down some ice and snow covered road with low visibility I want a steering wheel and some pedals when those sensors ice over and start malfunctioning. Today's airplanes have extremely advanced autopilot systems with layers of redundancy for reliability, but they still have manual controls for a human to fly them when something goes wrong. Pilots still have to take over controls often. I want the same option in my vehicle.
It is nice apple is reaching for the stars but has zero reputation/experience for doing any thing related to cars.
Small minds think small. Comments like this remind me of what "primitive" people thought of the idea of Aeroplanes.
I find the idea of a fully automated car quite frightening. I love technology, building things, moving forward. But I can't see this being really ready for a long time. Programmed for specific routes, on lanes that are clearly marked as being primarily for these vehicles (like a bus lane that other cars are sometimes allowed to drive in) and used to shuttle people from say the parking lot to an airport terminal - sure; but on the open freeway (highway/motorway) no - certainly NOT without a steering wheel for emergency override.
I reckon this is a car intended to show car manufacturers what Apple thinks cars could do. I think they will then produce technology, developed during this car's research, which they can sell to other car companies in an attempt to get their hooks into the car industry at large. What that might be, not sure.
As for a fully automated car there are too many situations where FULL automation will likely cause disaster.
Example: Someone needs to get to hospital quick, you manage to get them into your car, but they cannot sit upright. You cannot put the seatbelt on them, the car will not move until the seatbelt is on. You click the seatbelt buckle in without actually putting the belt around them; the safety seatbelt tensioner notices the belt is not extended enough, you pull your hair out tying to get the car to move, finally the passenger pulls on the seatbelt - randomly the car starts working, you have no idea why, you finally get to the hospital, sorry Fred, if you were one minute earlier we might have been able to do something for them.
Another: You need to get away from someone shooting at you. They break the glass of the car. Your car informs you: "Sorry Fred, an issue with the windscreen has been detected. To protect you and your passengers from potential glass implosion we cannot move. Please call a mechanic for assistance".
Contrived? Sure. But very simple examples where well meaning 'safety' actually causes harm.
For normal driving, it will likely not be a problem, but edge cases are immensely difficult to account for.
Even complex engineering should be kept as simple as possible. Steering wheel and peddles please.
Why design a car in which people sit inside the vehicle facing each other? People already sit facing each other on trains, all staring at their iPhones.
Ah, that’s why. Sorry, I get it now.
Ah, that’s why. Sorry, I get it now.
If Tesla that has millions of cars running around gathering information is taking several years to adjust the FSD capability, I wonder how Apple can possibly be so much better to launch a car that can already drive itself without billions of kilometers of testing.
Does the processor make that much difference?
Because I thought that, as long as there is enough computing power, the difficulty was software.
I don't know, but to me a 3/4 years timeline seems incredibly tiny. Even Tesla has delayed the FSD feature for a couple years now, and who knows when it'll actually become self-driving.
Does the processor make that much difference?
Because I thought that, as long as there is enough computing power, the difficulty was software.
I don't know, but to me a 3/4 years timeline seems incredibly tiny. Even Tesla has delayed the FSD feature for a couple years now, and who knows when it'll actually become self-driving.
Teslas actually use OpenStreetMap.org data to navigate things like parking lots and non-public driveways. So in this situation you can actually add the driveway to the map yourself to help it out!