Apple’s self-driving car fleet increases to total of 66 cars in California

Apple’s self-driving car fleet has increased, now a total of 66 cars in California. (Image source: Reuters) 

Apple’s self-driving car fleet is now at 66 cars, which is an increase from what was previously reported. According to a report by macReports, Apple has registered an additional number of self-driving cars with the Department of Motor Vehicles in California. Apple also has 111 registered drivers for these 66 self-driving cars.

Still Apple is number three on the list in terms of companies with their self-driving car fleets. GM Cruise with 117 cars is number one, while Google’s Waymo has 72 cars and over 411 drivers and is number two on the list. Tesla is number four with 39 self-driving cars, according to the report.

In May this year, it was reported by Bloomberg that Apple had signed a deal with Volkswagen AG, where it would equip vans from the automotive company with its self-driving technology. The deal was part of an internal Apple program called Project Titan.

According to the Bloomberg report, Apple might not build its own electric vehicle, but focus on technologies to control vehicles. The Volkswagen vans are being used to shuttle Apple employees to around its campus buildings, noted the report and the vans have been customised by Apple.

In June 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that the company was working on autonomous technology for cars in an interview to Bloomberg Television. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important…We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects…It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on,” Cook had said at the time.

Apple had originally hired more than a 1000 engineers to work on Project Titan, but since then it has reduced the number of people on the project. What remains unclear is the direction that Apple’s self-driving car project will take.

Based on what has been reported so, it is likely that Apple will tie-up with automotive companies to add its AI and autonomous technology to the other cars, rather than build its own vehicle from scratch.