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Apple hires former Tesla and Microsoft senior designer
Apple has hired Andrew Kim, formerly of Tesla and Microsoft, to bolster its design team. Kim captured the attention of many in 2011 with a custom iOS device stand and again in 2012 when, as a fan, he shared his vision for an overhaul of Microsoft's branding and design language. He then joined Microsoft and helped design the Windows 10 UI along with HoloLens and Xbox One S, he writes on his LinkedIn profile, before moving to Tesla.
Apple now has more than 50 autonomous cars on the road
Apple has more than doubled the number of its self-driving cars, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has confirmed. Since obtaining a permit to test autonomous vehicles, Apple's fleet size has steadily risen -- from a scant three test cars, to 27 in January, and now, 55 intelligent machines. Should the program remain on course, consumers could be chilling out in the driver's seat by 2019.
Apple’s self-driving cars could use routes others have traveled
Apple has been working on some sort of autonomous car for a while now. The system — apparently an add-on to existing vehicles — has been seen in a research paper back in November. More plans appeared in a presentation by Carnegie Mellon professor of AI Ruslan Salakhutdinov this month. Now, according to a patent discovered by Autoblog, Apple's 2015 application for an autonomous navigation system has just been published.
Apple chose BlackBerry's 'hood for its car OS project
Apple may have put the brakes on plans to build its own self-driving car, but the company's plug-and-play, self-driving operating system is still moving forward, even if the team has been scaled back. According to a new report from Bloomberg, what's left of Project Titan is coming together at Apple's Canadian office in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata, using a big team of engineers poached from BlackBerry's automotive software division QNX.
Bloomberg: Apple isn't building a car anymore
Remember Apple's ambitious, long-rumored and totally not top-secret plan to build a self-driving car for the masses? According to Bloomberg, it's dead, with several hundred employees being reassigned to other parts of the company's business. The project, codenamed Titan, has been scaled back from a full-blown vehicle to simply a self-driving system that can be sold to car makers for use in their own vehicles. It gets worse, since Titan's leaders have been told that their team needs to produce something feasible before the end of 2017, or else.
Apple is buying up Apple Car domains
If reports are to be believed, we can expect Apple to enter the automotive market by 2019. Before then, it appears the company is doing what it can to stop opportunists from derailing its plans. MacRumors reports that it's begun buying up domain names related to the fabled Apple Car, snatching up including apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto amongst others. A quick WHOIS search confirms they've been registered by staffers at 1 Infinite Loop over the last month.
Apple hires engineer who used to work on digital license plates
Apple has been snapping up talent from all over the place ever since it started putting more effort into Project Titan, Cupertino's electric car initiative. One of its latest hires is veteran software engineer Rónán Ó Braonáin, and according to Electrek, he was the Director of Engineering at a company called Reviver, which is developing what it claims is "the world's first digital license plate." These high-tech plates are expected to have wireless connectivity that can alert authorities if a vehicle is stolen or if its registration is expired. It could also give rise to shared vehicle programs, wherein a car can be legally owned by more than one person, each one associated with a unique plate number. The device can simply switch the letters and numbers displayed, depending on who's driving.
Apple's late to the car game and that's okay
There have been Apple Car (or iCar) rumors since at least 2007. They usually involve the company teaming up with an automaker to design an iPod- or iPhone-ready vehicle. Nothing has ever come of all the speculation and it's probably for the best. When Apple teams up with another company, the results are rarely satisfying. Remember the train wreck known as the Motorola ROKR? Now it looks like Apple is finally forging ahead with its automotive plans according to reports. But it'll do so on its own and there will reportedly be a production vehicle ready in 2019. If true, it's a bold plan. Not because launching a vehicle in that short of a time frame is impossible. It's that the electric, semi-autonomous vehicle market will be pretty crowded come 2019. But Apple should be fine with that because entering a crowded market with its own twist on a product is what it does.
Apple car targeted to launch in 2019, says WSJ
Details have been rather scarce on Apple's rumored electric car project, but there's some new info today. Wall Street Journal reports that Cupertino is "accelerating" the codenamed Project Titan effort, internally calling it a "committed project." What's more, WSJ's sources indicate Apple is aiming to ship the first vehicle in 2019. Yes, that means you'll have to wait a while to get behind the wheel, but we should be hearing more detailed info soon enough, especially when the company begins testing on public roads. Perhaps what's more interesting, though, is the report says the first car won't be fully autonomous, despite that type of system being part of the long-term plan.
EV battery-maker says Apple poached engineers for its new project
Did you hear that Apple might be working on a car, or at least something that heavily involves cars? It's reportedly already got quite a team working away at the project. But, those employees had to come from somewhere, right? According to a lawsuit from electric car battery maker A123 Systems, Apple has been poaching its best engineers, apparently to work in a battery division of its own. The company alleges poaching started back in June 2014, with Apple drawing away lead engineers from the battery maker's "most critical projects." According to the filing from Massachusetts federal court: "Apple is currently developing a large-scale battery division to compete in the very same field as A123."
