Apple intensified its work on its skills for autonomous driving last year, which fits with the current Apple car speculation dynamic. But even if Cupertino has intensified its efforts, Apple is not at the top, at least in this area.
An autonomous Apple Car will need an absolutely high-end software solution in order to obtain approval for the roads of this world. It is well known that Apple has been working on its own solutions for years, for which they use converted SUVs. These vehicles have been doing their laps primarily on California roads since 2017. A safety driver must always be in the vehicle, which is also necessary, because last year too, the driver had to be taken over by the driver present in 130 situations State collects.
Apple still has a lot to do
The development history of Apple’s car project is difficult to trace, occasionally there is an impression of a certain unstructuredness. Between the end of 2019 and the end of 2020, Apple’s cars covered around 30,000 km, significantly more than in the same period of the previous year, when only 12,000 km were driven. In 2017, however, Apple drove significantly more than last year.
Either way, Apple is not ahead in terms of both quantity and quality: The GM subsidiary Cruise and the Google subsidiary Waymo drove millions of km last year, while their safety drivers had to intervene dramatically less often.
At GM, this was only necessary in 27 situations.
The road to a fully autonomous Apple Car, as these data seem to show, will be long and rocky.
Source link