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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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Sensible minds think sensibly. Apple can be great at a lot of things, software not being among them lately. If you are going to use an autonomous vehicle you need to have some way to control it, otherwise it is a ticking bomb waiting to explode.
To be honest, I am not a great fan of Fly-By-Wire technology either, although I have to acknowledge that something mechanical will eventually break, so there is a Catch-22 to which I have no solution.
I think that if one takes the scenario of getting off the highway and travel rural roads in England, most of which are only narrow enough for a single car, the need for a yoke/wheel and pedals plus hybrid fully autonomous (highway) and driver directed (rural roads) modes is the more logical, practical and realistic type of usage. Personally, my distaste for the Cult of EV Boosters extends to the Fully Autonomous boosters as well as neither is 100% realistic. Both of these things will find their niche in society, but the current enviro-political framing of EVs simply overlooks the actual realities of travel by vehicle in today’s world. I own two hybrids (Prius C and Crosstrek) and my next vehicle will most likely be a Hybrid or and ICE vehicle. Where I live, an EV is just not a practical consideration for the next phase of my life. Neither is an autonomous vehicle. Apple alone might crack the nut, but they are far from the only players in the game. Personally, the commenter(s) posting that this is to artificially boost Apple stock are probably correct.
I'm sure in addition to sticker shock for the car there will be sticker shock for the liability insurance.
As others have stated, I believe this will most likely start as a “closed environment” system, like campuses or small sections of downtown areas.
I don’t think Apple is actually going to make cars for costumers to purchase… I think they’re actually gearing up to launch a new service where you can hail a ride from their fully autonomous cars.
It would most likely start at a very few select campuses/cities and slowly expand from there.
With Apple getting into so many different services these days, it makes a lot more sense than trying to create an actual consumer vehicle.
I don’t think Apple is actually going to make cars for costumers to purchase… I think they’re actually gearing up to launch a new service where you can hail a ride from their fully autonomous cars.
It would most likely start at a very few select campuses/cities and slowly expand from there.
With Apple getting into so many different services these days, it makes a lot more sense than trying to create an actual consumer vehicle.
No Thanks! Part of owning a Car is to Driving it & having Fun! The experience! One of my hand on the steering wheel and the other on one you guys girls thighs as she sit in my passenger seat. I like being in Full Control.
LOL. As much as I love the iphone, the ipad, and the mac, I really don't trust Apple's software team. Just look at ios 15! To this date, I am still skeptical if my 8 plus is using the battery efficiently by the ios. Imagine the car battery has a drain issue.
The ignorant fanboy is strong with this one. There is no way such a vehicle would launch by 2025.
My Watch just told me 'Stand Goal Achieved'.
I've been sitting at my desk all day and for the last two hours I've been laying on the couch like a potato.
So forget about all this automated self driving car ******** until 2100.
If we even get to 2100. Progress isn't linear and we have a lot of destructive people who want to turn the clock back to 1821.
If we want faster progress without interruption then the richest need to stop acting like maniacs on twitter, stop wasting their wealth to pay for luxury garbage, stop using their wealth to fund corruption and extremists. They need to pony up some taxes and help pay for the massive infrastructure changes we need in every city in the world.
I've been sitting at my desk all day and for the last two hours I've been laying on the couch like a potato.
So forget about all this automated self driving car ******** until 2100.
If we even get to 2100. Progress isn't linear and we have a lot of destructive people who want to turn the clock back to 1821.
If we want faster progress without interruption then the richest need to stop acting like maniacs on twitter, stop wasting their wealth to pay for luxury garbage, stop using their wealth to fund corruption and extremists. They need to pony up some taxes and help pay for the massive infrastructure changes we need in every city in the world.
I’d like to see a driverless car try to park itself in a packed multilevel underground parking structure - then try to drive out
The only application I can see for a full autonomous car in the next 20 years is in closed circuit environments.
It would take at least a decade just to get such a vehicle to make it through safety standards that aren't even written yet.
This rumour is simply ridiculous..
Siri can’t even find directions to the local coffee shop reliably, imagine sitting in the car for 30 minutes trying to tell it where to go…
On top of that, one thing is making a vehicle without controls, another thing is getting it approved to be put on our roads.
Just impossible.
Not even Tesla has a fully reliable autopilot, I recently went for a drive with a friend who has a Tesla 3 and the car was about to miss a turn completely, plus it speeds up and slows down abruptly without any reason. On top of that good luck with traffic lights, in 30 min city drive he had to manually accelerate at a green light because the car was coming to a full stop.
This dream of autonomous driving is at least 15 years away in my opinion.
Siri can’t even find directions to the local coffee shop reliably, imagine sitting in the car for 30 minutes trying to tell it where to go…
On top of that, one thing is making a vehicle without controls, another thing is getting it approved to be put on our roads.
Just impossible.
Not even Tesla has a fully reliable autopilot, I recently went for a drive with a friend who has a Tesla 3 and the car was about to miss a turn completely, plus it speeds up and slows down abruptly without any reason. On top of that good luck with traffic lights, in 30 min city drive he had to manually accelerate at a green light because the car was coming to a full stop.
This dream of autonomous driving is at least 15 years away in my opinion.
Me too. Not only that, I would like to see it succeed.
When robot cars reach a point that they kill fewer people than human piloted cars then this will be a great success. This is the rational benchmark to be achieved.
Any policy requiring robot cars to be fatality proof, or drastically better than today’s status quo, before they can be adopted is bad policy based on unrealistic demands which will needlessly kill excess people.
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I tend to agree with this but I think it will be both. Fleets for folks who want an Apple Uber and sales to individuals who can afford the vehicle and don’t want to ride in a shared vehicle. Democracy and luxury variants if you will. The individual owners will have to accept that their vehicle may not go everywhere but for those who do most travel close to home it may be ok. Also for the fleet approach imagine this cutting into taxi fleets in big cities.
That’s not my point, it’s not either AI or human controlled, it can be both.
In the medium term, it will be best if human controlled mode is limited to parking lots and off road courses.
Why should this be so hard?
In reality, if people drop their cars at the entrance and the cars are assigned a slot in consultation with the parking structure, they will be able to park in higher density as the spaces won’t have to be sized for people to open doors to get in.
It will be like valet parking. You call your car and it comes to pick you up.
Parking like this is way way easier than trying to avoid bicyclists and pedestrians.
(In the transition phase, robot parking might be segregated from human piloted parking.)
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- There is nothing smaller than an atom.
- The Earth is flat.
- There is nothing beyond the ocean.
- The Sun orbits the Earth.
- Man talking across vast distances is impractical.
- There is nothing smaller than an electron.
- Man will never fly.
- Man won’t ever be able to wirelessly communicate.
- Man will never be able to fly solo across the Atlantic.
- Females will never be able to fly solo across the Atlantic.
- Open Heart surgery is impossible.
- Man will never walk on the moon.
- Organ transplants at scale is unrealistic.
- Man will never be able to fly nonstop around the Earth.
- A personal telephone in almost everyone’s hip pocket is an absurd idea.
- Man will never reach the deepest point in the ocean.
I think your declarative statement is and will be proven wrong and rather silly.
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Cars have been well capable of parallel parking for more than a decade, parking in a parking structure, and even with humans in the mix (driving and walking) isn’t really much of a challenge and is a relatively benign environment compared to the complexity of city street environments.
I think you are very wrong.
In order for Apple to keep growing it has to work on entering transportation, medical and finance. It has already dipped its toes into all three.
Transport: Maps, CarPlay, and Car.
Medical: Watch, Health App and patient records.
Finance: Apple Pay, Apple Cash, and Apple Card.
It has a good shot at picking up a sizable chunk in each of these. It is easily able to patiently finance the R&D or investments to bring all of these to life.
So why would Apple need to fraudulently goose it’s stock with vapor ware?
And for a time it will be.
Those cars with legacy driver controls will likely have to install a beacon (to alert the robot cars and transportation grid that an irrational vehicle is in the area.
Human piloted cars will pay much higher insurance premiums. Indeed, those hanging on to legacy tech and paying big premiums will be like profit life support for insurance companies.
Later after the vast majority of the fleet is autonomous, we will see the dismantlement of street signs and traffic lights and carbon piloted cars will have both a beacon and require some kind of display to provide their pilot with the equivalent of the info given by the present signage.