The computer giant is planning an autonomous car, but the company doubts that the technology available on the market is not sufficiently developed.
Whether the Apple car will look like this remains speculation.
The Apple car remains a secret project to this day. However, some things can be learned about the project from the patents submitted and the personnel policy. In addition, details about the plans for a fully autonomous vehicle with an apple logo keep leaking out, such as the internal project name Titan or the fact that it will be an electric car.
“Bloomberg” now claims to have learned from unknown sources that Apple has scaled back its claims for an autonomous car and is considering 2026 as the earliest launch date. Over the past few months, the realization has matured that a vehicle without a steering wheel and pedals cannot be realized with the existing technology.
The Titan project is now set to undergo a significant transformation. According to Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly developing a less ambitious vehicle that has both a steering wheel and pedals. It should achieve the driving autonomy that is common today on motorways, which Tesla, for example, offers with the autopilot system. This would mean that the driver still acts as a pilot and can only take his hands off the steering wheel in restricted driving situations (autonomy level 3).
As a result of this news, Apple has scaled back its ambitions towards a full autonomy car (level 5). Entering a product world that was completely new for the computer giant must have presented Apple with insurmountable problems. The vehicle now planned threatens to become a market competitor, not a market pioneer, as was the case with smartphones thanks to the iPhone.
A British car leasing company picked this vehicle out of submitted patents.
So far, Apple has not commented on the new project details. There has never been an official statement on other elements of Project Titan anyway.
Cameras, radar and lidar
Kevin Lynch has been leading Project Titan since the end of 2021. He is also the head of the department that develops the operating system for the Apple Watch. Under his leadership, a processor was created for the car that quadrupled the performance of the most powerful Apple chips. This super chip is already well developed and almost ready for mass production. It was intended for work in a fully autonomous car with autonomy level 5, but now this preparatory work seems to have been called into question. In order to save costs, Apple could now reduce the performance of a central processor.
Unlike in Tesla models, for example, cameras as well as lidar and radar sensors are to be used in the Apple car. Waymo also uses such a combination in its tests with autonomously driving cars. Tesla works with purely camera-based systems.
So far, Apple spends around one billion dollars a year developing the car. The cloud services that Apple buys from Amazon Web Services annually amount to around $125 million alone.
Apparently, the original plan was to take over control of an Apple car from headquarters in emergencies, something like what is possible today with networked computers. Apparently, Apple is also considering developing its own vehicle insurance package.
Due to the scaled back plans, an Apple car should no longer cost $120,000 but less than $100,000. That would be just below the entry-level Mercedes EQS or BMW i7.
Swivel seats and gullwing doors could be part of the Apple car, according to leasing company Vanarama.
Speculations on the design
It is not known what the Apple car will look like one day. Various drawings and renderings of plump white small cars have been circulating on the internet for ten years. But Apple has not commented publicly on the design to date. The plan is to complete the vehicle design by 2023 and the functionality by the end of 2024. From 2025, the first prototypes should be on the road for testing purposes. All that is known is that the German engineer Ulrich Kranz heads the design department. Among other things, Kranz was involved in the development of the BMW i3.
Originally, the planned vehicle would have been given a new design without steering and pedals, which differs significantly from conventional vehicles. Now, however, a more conventional design is envisaged, featuring a driver’s seat with control units. There are a number of patents filed by Apple that are in the public domain.
British car leasing company Vanarama used the patent drawings to create computer drawings of a vehicle that can serve as a guide for a future Apple car. Details on the drive and other features are not yet available.