The Curious Case of Apple’s Supposed Self-Driving Car
Posted on 08/18/2015 8:30:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Since we last published an in-depth report into Apple's Project Titan autonomous car project seven months ago, the company's bank balance has grown by £15bn ($23bn) – enough to fund the entire development process of a completely new car several times over. Now, after a small misfire in the rumour mills, talk of an Apple car is back on the front pages.
But let us rewind briefly to that small misfire and look at where we are at today. Rumours of Apple producing its own car began at the start of 2015; they escalated quickly as talk of a secret new building near its California base led on to images of a mysterious Apple-registered van covered in sensors driving nearby.
The Financial Times claimed CEO Tim Cook had given the car – known as Project Titan – the green light way back in September of 2014, when the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch were announced.
His commands to project leader and former Ford engineer Steve Zadesky were to form a team of up to 1,000 employees and create a vehicle. Several employees were then poached from electric car company Tesla (and vice versa), then an anonymous email leaked to the press by an apparent Apple employee said the iCar would "change the landscape and give Tesla a run for its money".
But then the house of cars came tumble down, as Apple itself announced it would be driving a fleet of vans through cities all over the world to collect images and data for its Maps applications. Just as Google does with its famous Street View vans, Apple would be driving, scanning, photographing and mapping thousands of miles of roads. Photographs of the vans started to appear on Twitter and it looked as if that's what Project Titan was all along. Critics also pointed to Apple's CarPlay dashboard interface – available on a range of vehicles, from Ferraris to Seats – and said this was Apple's only project on wheels.
But then the rumour mills changed up a gear
In March 2015, German magazine Auto Motor und Sport claimed Apple was interested in using the BMW i3 as a starting point for its own electric car. But BMW denied this, stating: "We are in regular talks with companies from the IT and telecommunications sector, including Apple, concerning topics like connected vehicles. Developing or building a car is not a topic of these discussions."
In July it was revealed that Apple had hired motoring industry veteran Doug Betts to work on Project Titan. Betts has worked in the automotive industry for the past 28 years, holding positions at Michelin, Toyota, Nissan and Chrysler Group, where he was senior vice president of product and service quality for seven years.
Starting at Apple in July 2015, Betts updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect the move, but gives no details about his role at the iPhone maker. The LinkedIn update simply states his position as "Operations – Apple Inc." and that he is based in the San Francisco Bay Area – where the tech company's global headquarters are located. Soon after his move to Apple was reported, Betts' LinkedIn profile was deleted.
Less than a week later, German publication Manager Magazin said Cook had once again visited BMW and the production line for its i3 electric car in Leipzig, Germany.
On this trip, the magazine's July issues claimed, Cook again showed an interest in using the i3 as a platform for Project Titan. It was claimed these negotiations began in the autumn of 2014, right after work on Project Titan began. The talks broke down and the two companies parted ways, but promised to check in periodically with each other in the future.
A car is being made – and it's further along than many realise
On 14 August the Guardian made the strongest claim yet that Apple is building its own electric, autonomous car – and it is much closer to becoming a reality than anyone realised. The paper claimed Apple is seeking places to test its car and had made enquiries to GoMentum Station, a 5,000-acre site which is a former naval base near San Francisco being turned into an autonomous testing facility.
Apple engineer Frank Fearon – LinkedIn page deleted, but believed to previously work at car company Lit Motors – wrote to GoMetum: "We would...like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it]." The quote was obtained by the Guardian under a public records act request and is the closest we have so far come to a smoking gun.
Fearon also wrote: "We are hoping to see a presentation on the...testing grounds with a layout, photos, and a description of how the various areas of the grounds could be used." A tour of the facility by Apple was postponed in late May, with Jack Hall of GoMentum's autonomous vehicle programme writing to Fearon: "We would still like to meet in order to keep everything moving and to meet your testing schedule."
'We can't say any more, but Apple is interested'
Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, owner of the GoMentum Station, said: "We had to sign a nondisclosure agreement with Apple. We can't tell you anything other than they've come in and they're interested." The site contains 20 miles of paved roads and claims to be "the largest secure test facility in the world and will become the centre of connected vehicle and autonomous vehicle research".
Honda is currently the only carmaker to become a partner of the GoMentum Station, signing a $250,000 (£160,000) memorandum of understanding with the facility to begin testing soon. With most major carmakers –and technology companies like Google and Uber – setting up autonomous driving research centres in California over the last 12 months, the list of companies secretly testing here is set to quickly grow. Whether Apple joins that list remains to be seen.
I can see it now.
You ask to go to Miami OH and end up in Miami FL...
Thanks to SeekandFind for posting the article.
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Hoestly i am not intrested in any vehicle that puts me so close to the ground. Not with all the larger vehicles on the road.
But the most dangerous flaw is clearly the broken mapping App, Apple Map, that replaced the excellent Google (GOOG) App available on earlier iPhones. As the New York Times reported, Apple decided that it no longer wanted to give Google all that valuable information about how iPhone customers were using Google Maps.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/27/apple-maps-six-most-epic-fails/
The former Alameda Naval Base is huge. My dad was stationed there for years before his passing in the early 70s, and I have memories of visiting his office and spending time there. After its closing, it has been used by movie studios (The Matrix Reloaded where they filmed the freeway sequence) and TV shows (Myth Busters). Also for car events; I test drove new cars there for some event. It makes sense for Apple to test drive a car there.
It depends on how much power your vehicle has. I have enjoyed riding my motorcycles and sports cars. And accelerating out of the way of larger vehicles that are careless. Nothing like being close to the ground and feeling the wind and roar of a good engine. It's a risk, but so are many things such as sports where you can get injured.
Motorcycles and sports cars are often the careless ones.
Its not even that, it is about being able to see other vehicles and have good visibility of what is going on around you.
Not in my experience. There are numerous times I've seen large vehicles weaving across lane lines, drivers are texting or eating and are careless. Then there are the lane changers who never turn their heads around to look, relying on their mirrors or not at all. A lot of people own large SUVs and trucks yet can't see below the passenger windows. One of my friends that owned a large truck was complaining to me that people are always honking at him when he changes lanes. I asked him if he's aware of smaller vehicles next to him. He said it's their responsibility to get out of his way when he changes lanes! He said it's not his fault if he can't see below his windows! I told him someone would someday shoot him if he kept that up.
I've had cars come up alongside my motorcycle and bump it, pure negligence on their part. I've never had an accident with my motorcycles or sports cars in over 50 years of driving, and never caused an accident with my other cars. I have been hit several times by red light or stop sign runners and had my car totaled. A lot of safety has to do with watching out for the other guy and avoiding them; sometimes unavoidable if they run a light.
That's part of it; see my other post about other drivers not looking at what is around them. There are times when I've had to accelerate to get away from harm. Like debris from another vehicle's blown tires, one time had a spray of lug nuts hitting my windshield. Other times debris blown off trucks into my path. Or when a drunk driver weaved and caused a 7 car pileup in front and around me, I escaped without a scratch. Good visibility is important, but so is quick thinking and avoidance.
One reason I'm not so keen on driverless cars is that avoidance depends heavily on how the car is programmed. A programmer really cannot program avoidance of all the things that can go wrong on the road. Sometimes it's better to run over debris on the road rather than deviate from your path and risk a collision. Can a driverless car really calculate in a split second whether debris is safe to run over? Or will it simply weave to avoid it and cause a collision elsewhere?
Why don't you use some more up-to-date FUD? Apple Maps is as accurate if not more so than Google Maps now. . . and even in September of 2012, had only a few extremely hyped issues with directions, as Apple leased it's data from Tom Tom, a well known and respected mapping source.
In fact, a side-by-side comparison of directions between Apple Maps and Google Maps in the USA at the time found the directions that often Apple had shorter and quicker response time with better routing when actual addresses were input. Where Google showed better was in mapping business locations by name where a business had to be looked up. Apple was using Yelp! data and it was frequently out-of-date or erroneously located, while Google was less frequently out-of-date but still often had closed or missing .
The other issue was in Apple's 3D view with some hilarious results where 3D roads followed the terrain or bridges swooped down into river beds. . . but Google had no better results when they introduced the feature two years later while Apple had pretty much perfected it.
Three of your link's "Six most Epic Fails," to use their headline title, refer to 3D graphics failures as the system tried to render things like bridges and buildings from 2D images. Something no other mapping software had ever been done before on a handheld, such as:
Two had to do with missed addressing having to do with out-dated data from Yelp!
And finally,
The Tom Tom data base from which Apple was leasing its data, is a Netherlands company. . . a country with a large Muslim population. . . a country which does not recognize Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel. They, being politically correct, like the United States, absurdly list the capitol of Israel as Tel Aviv.
As for errors in directions, Google had about the same number of mis-directed travelers as did Apple Maps. . . but Google was not directing the FUD campaign against their own product as they were against Apple Maps.
Your characterization of why Apple dropped Google Maps is wrong. Google was deliberately providing a crippled version of Google Maps without turn-by-turn for iOS devices while providing a full featured version with voice turn-by-turn for Android devices and refused to provide one for Apple—although Apple had helped them develop turn-by-turn voice for the iPhone or iPad. That was a deliberate marketing ploy by Google to make Android a better choice for Google Maps. Apple dropped them because of that choice on Google's part.
It had nothing to do with "valuable information" but rather with choices made by Google in order to push Android.
I dont want a car to make a decision that will kill me, to, in its estimation, save others. That may not be the correct assumption or estimation. Or if its programmed to weave to avoid stuff, and the shoulder isnt there and te car slides down into a tree or off a cliff.
Good example. Here's another. Let's say an object or debris is in the driverless car's path. Maybe the program decides to weave to avoid the object, but when it does so it drifts into the path of oncoming traffic which is hidden by a curve. Not every road is marked with divider lines. Sometimes there are multiple moving objects, such as a few deer crossing the road. Can the program handle multiple objects? How about when a snowplow comes barreling down the center of the road with you having barely enough space between snowplow and the cliff edge (something I've encountered while in the mountains). I'm scared of self-driving cars being on the road.
It is in MY experience.
So many times an asshole on a bike or in a sports car have cut in front of my 5000# truck too stupid to realize THAT is my stopping distance required. They are also too inattentive to realize before they know it I could punch the 380hp and be in front of them hitting my brakes if I wanted to.
I have had bikes and sports cars too but I understood physics unlike them.
That is in MY experience.
Self-driving cars might end up in the bad driver category depending on well they're programmed.
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