Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025

[emmz0r]

Bold.

Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025

Apple is picking up its work on an Apple-designed car and is aiming to create a fully autonomous vehicle, reports Bloomberg. Apple is...

www.macrumors.com

I hope this puts pressure on Tesla to actually deliver something usable before then

 

[diplomat33]

Bold.

Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025

Apple is picking up its work on an Apple-designed car and is aiming to create a fully autonomous vehicle, reports Bloomberg. Apple is...

www.macrumors.com

I hope this puts pressure on Tesla to actually deliver something usable before then

This is pure vaporware.

The fact is that Apple has not shown that they are serious about autonomous driving IMO. Last year, in their CA DMV report, Apple reported only 18k autonomous miles and 1 disengagement per 144 miles. That is far behind almost everybody else. That is why I say Apple is not serious about FSD. They are not doing enough miles. The leaders in FSD like Waymo, Cruise, Baidu are doing way more miles. Last year, Waymo did 600k miles and that was only down because of covid. The year before that, Waymo did over 1M miles. Cruise does nearly 1M+ miles per year. And the leaders in FSD also report disengagement rates in the 10k+ miles range, way better than the 144 miles that Apple reported.

There is also the fact that solving autonomous driving is really difficult. We've seen the major companies spend years and billions of dollars and not solve the problem yet. Tesla has spend 5 years since they launched AP2 and they are "only" at L2 FSD Beta. Waymo has been working on FSD for many years and is "only" at geofenced L4 in a couple cities. Cruise has been working on FSD for years and is just now testing driverless in geofenced SF.

And then there is the fact that Apple claims to want to develop a fully driverless vehicle with no steering or pedals. That requires a lot of design and engineering. So not just there is the challenges of "solving FSD" but there is also a lot of work that will need to go into designing and engineering the vehicle. Cruise has designed their Origin vehicle and it has taken them a couple years just to design and more years to validate and test the vehicle.

The idea that Apple will design and produce a vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals and "solve FSD" all in the next 4 years is ridiculous IMO.

 

[diplomat33]

...and Mercedes, Ford, Google, Mobileye, GM, Tesla and ..... are all doing the same.

No. Mercedes, Ford, Google, Mobileye, GM and Tesla have autonomous products. Maybe not completely finished "solved" FSD, but they have some stage of autonomous driving. Mercedes has L3. Ford with ArgoAI is actively testing L4 robotaxis. Google, aka Waymo, has driverless L4 robotaxis operating on public roads today. GM, aka Cruise, has driverless L4 robotaxis operating on public roads today. Mobileye is actively testing robotaxis and is in the process of launching a robotaxi service (with safety drivers for now) in 2 cities. My point is that they have "something". Apple has nothing. They have a couple cars doing 18k miles per year in CA with a disengagement of 1 per 144 miles.

 

[KArnold]

The chip's capabilities mean it will run hot and likely require the development of a sophisticated cooling system.

Wow. Hope the battery tech improves by then as well. I assume they mean "liquid cooled" for the most part.

 

[Bouba]

Perhaps it means that by 2025 Apple will have bought an autonomous car company

 

[Todd Burch]

Bold.

Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025

Apple is picking up its work on an Apple-designed car and is aiming to create a fully autonomous vehicle, reports Bloomberg. Apple is...

www.macrumors.com

I hope this puts pressure on Tesla to actually deliver something usable before then

Yeah this is utter nonsense. Does Apple have a fleet of tens or hundreds of thousands of vehicles collecting data to feed a neural net?

No. This ain’t happening.

 

[emmz0r]

This is pure vaporware.

The fact is that Apple has not shown that they are serious about autonomous driving IMO. Last year, in their CA DMV report, Apple reported only 18k autonomous miles and 1 disengagement per 144 miles. That is far behind almost everybody else.

Tesla logged 0 or close to 0 autonomous miles right?

Anyways, I trust Apple timelines more than Tesla at this point.
It could be that they have a super algorithm that does not depend on zillions of miles.
Maybe they bought mobileye stuff?

 

[diplomat33]

Apple only has 69 autonomous test cars.

Apple adds more drivers to its autonomous car fleet; number of cars remains at 69 - 9to5Mac

After cutting its California self-driving test fleet, Apple has been consistently expanding the number of drivers as months go by.

9to5mac.com

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

This is pure vaporware.

Wouldn't a better term be rumorware?

vaporware needs in actual announcement, and expectation.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Apple only has 69 autonomous test cars.

Apple adds more drivers to its autonomous car fleet; number of cars remains at 69 - 9to5Mac

After cutting its California self-driving test fleet, Apple has been consistently expanding the number of drivers as months go by.

9to5mac.com

69 more than Tesla.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Perhaps it means that by 2025 Apple will have bought an autonomous car company

If they're actually serious about this is exactly what they'll do.

The sad thing about a lot of large corporations these days is they don't innovate themselves, and instead they innovate though acquisitions.

 

[eli_]

I can't see Apple ever selling cars, it just doesn't fit with their business. They sell premium/luxury tech products that are expensive yet attainable by the mainstream population (at least it is for Americans). Either they make a $30k cheap car that's attainable or they'll make a $70k fancy car that's just out of reach for most people. Either way it hurts their brand.

 

[Bouba]

I can't see Apple ever selling cars, it just doesn't fit with their business. They sell premium/luxury tech products that are expensive yet attainable by the mainstream population (at least it is for Americans). Either they make a $30k cheap car that's attainable or they'll make a $70k fancy car that's just out of reach for most people. Either way it hurts their brand.

Is it possible it’s all spurred on by Elon claiming that iPhones are no longer exciting and he can make a better smartphone?

 

[EVNow]

Bold.

I hope this puts pressure on Tesla to actually deliver something usable before then

Are you just kidding or are you not aware of these rumors for over 3 years ?

Apple car project - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Apple electric car project (codenamed "Titan")[1] is an electric car project undergoing research and development by Apple Inc.[2] Apple has yet to openly discuss any of its self-driving research,[3] but around 5,000 employees were reported to be working on the project as of 2018.[4] In May 2018, Apple reportedly partnered with Volkswagen to produce an autonomous employee shuttle van based on the T6 Transporter commercial vehicle platform.[5] In August 2018, the BBC reported that Apple had 66 road-registered driverless cars, with 111 drivers registered to operate those cars.[6] In 2020, it is believed that Apple is still working on self driving related hardware, software and service as a potential product, instead of actual Apple-branded cars.[7] In December 2020, Reuters reported that Apple was planning on a possible launch date of 2024,[8] but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed it would not be launched before 2025 and might not be launched until 2028 or later.[9]​

 

[johnmodely]

No. Mercedes, Ford, Google, Mobileye, GM and Tesla have autonomous products. Maybe not completely finished "solved" FSD, but they have some stage of autonomous driving. Mercedes has L3. Ford with ArgoAI is actively testing L4 robotaxis. Google, aka Waymo, has driverless L4 robotaxis operating on public roads today. GM, aka Cruise, has driverless L4 robotaxis operating on public roads today. Mobileye is actively testing robotaxis and is in the process of launching a robotaxi service (with safety drivers for now) in 2 cities. My point is that they have "something". Apple has nothing. They have a couple cars doing 18k miles per year in CA with a disengagement of 1 per 144 miles.

You misunderstand how far ahead Apple is in terms of silicon and AI, and how much R&D they can throw at it. Their processors are already beating anything intel/amd/nvidia can do, an by 2025 they'll be producing a monster 2nm AI chip that tesla/waymo can dream of having. Tesla is still on 14nm HW3 because they simply cant spend billions on higher nodes like Apple can.

 

[superblast]

You misunderstand how far ahead Apple is in terms of silicon and AI, and how much R&D they can throw at it. Their processors are already beating anything intel/amd/nvidia can do, an by 2025 they'll be producing a monster 2nm AI chip that tesla/waymo can dream of having. Tesla is still on 14nm HW3 because they simply cant spend billions on higher nodes like Apple can.

All that processing power with nothing to process.

 

[EVNow]

You misunderstand how far ahead Apple is in terms of silicon and AI, and how much R&D they can throw at it. Their processors are already beating anything intel/amd/nvidia can do, an by 2025 they'll be producing a monster 2nm AI chip that tesla/waymo can dream of having. Tesla is still on 14nm HW3 because they simply cant spend billions on higher nodes like Apple can.

Apple produces nothing inhouse.

Who runs their foundry ? The same foundry will be available for others too.

ps :

Samsung adds 2nm process node to foundry roadmap

But who needs the latest and greatest when 17nm has been boosted, eh?

www.theregister.com

 

[eli_]

I don't think we're at risk for the chip being the limiting factor, the software is 100% the limit for self-driving. It's limited by how fast you can fix bugs. Tesla will have HW4 ready to go in a year or so, and then we're back to having tons of headroom again.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Apple produces nothing inhouse.

Who runs their foundry ? The same foundry will be available for others too.

ps :

Samsung adds 2nm process node to foundry roadmap

But who needs the latest and greatest when 17nm has been boosted, eh?

www.theregister.com

Apple is TSMC's biggest customer (25% of TSMC's revenue!) so they have a lot more clout than smaller customers.
I have no doubt that Apple can make better chips than Tesla. I'm sure the rest of their hardware will also be much better since they're not tied to a 5+ year old design.
As eli_ said though, it seems like the software is the limiting factor.

 

[EVNow]

Apple is TSMC's biggest customer (25% of TSMC's revenue!) so they have a lot more clout than smaller customers.
I have no doubt that Apple can make better chips than Tesla. I'm sure the rest of their hardware will also be much better since they're not tied to a 5+ year old design.
As eli_ said though, it seems like the software is the limiting factor.

All true - but to imply Apple has some secret 2nm sauce nobody has access to is weird. They don’t even own any foundries unlike Samsung, which wants to sell a lot of batteries to Tesla.