Apple Car Reportedly Delayed Again, Won't Be Fully Autonomous
Photo: Eric Thayer / Stringer (Getty Images)
Oh, the Apple Car. For years, it’s been rumored to be a real thing that’s definitely happening. It’s reportedly been canceled, delayed, refocused, restarted, and rethought so many times, it’s hard to keep up. But apparently, Project Titan is still ongoing, and we’ll for sure get an Apple Car one day. Allegedly. But once again, its big debut has reportedly been pushed back, this time til 2026.
Bloomberg reports that, instead of coming in 2024 as was promised back in 2020, the launch of the Apple Car has been delayed another two years. Additionally, the plans to make it fully autonomous have also been changed because it “isn’t feasible with current technology.” Instead, when the Apple Car gets here, it will allegedly still require a human to drive it, while the car will offer some level of highway automation.
According to Bloomberg’s report, “Apple currently plans to develop a vehicle that lets drivers conduct other tasks — say, watch a movie or play a game — on a freeway and be alerted with ample time to switch over to manual control if they reach city streets or encounter inclement weather. The company has discussed launching the feature in North America initially and then improving and expanding it over time.”
Maybe that will actually happen. Maybe not. Probably not. Encouraging drivers to completely zone out and watch a movie while driving a car, where they may have to take over control at any moment, seems dangerous. But maybe we’re just haters who hate the future and think it’s cool to be skeptical of new technology.
Apple’s secret self-driving sauce is reportedly a super-powerful onboard computer system that it calls Denali, working hand-in-hand with some custom sensors. Denali’s processor is said to have the power of four of Apple’s most advanced microchips combined, and it’s apparently almost production-ready. Except Apple’s also considering using a less-powerful version at first to keep costs down.
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Like every other company that actually has a chance at possibly reaching Level 5 autonomy, the Apple Car will reportedly use a combination of lidar, radar, and cameras. Oh, and it also “has a cloud-based component for some artificial-intelligence processing” that depends on Amazon Web Services and will cost Apple $125 million per year.
The company is also said to be considering building some kind of “remote command center” to take control from the computers and allow someone to manually assume remote operation the car in an emergency situation. Lastly, Apple may offer its own car insurance program.
As far as pricing goes, Apple reportedly planned to sell its cars for about $120,000 but is now targeting a price closer to $100,000. The company also, reportedly, hasn’t even picked a design yet, so who knows. Per the alleged roadmap, Apple will finalize the design next year, lock in the features in 2024, conduct testing in 2025, and start selling the car to the public in 2026. Since full autonomy isn’t happening anytime soon, it’ll look “something more like a traditional car, with a driver’s seat,” per Bloomberg.
So yeah, that’s the latest info on the Apple Car. It’s been delayed again, it won’t actually be self-driving, it’ll look like a regular car, and you’ll have to be absolutely loaded to afford one. But it’s definitely happening. Allegedly.
