Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Photographer: Sam Hall / Bloomberg
Photographer: Sam Hall / Bloomberg
Apple Inc. it will take at least half a decade to launch an autonomous electric vehicle, as development work is still at an early stage, according to people familiar with the efforts.
The technology giant based in Cupertino, California, has a small team of hardware engineers who develop transmission systems, interior and exterior vehicle designs with the goal of finally shipping a vehicle. This is a more ambitious goal than in previous years, when the project focused primarily on creating an underlying autonomous driving system. The company has also added more former Tesla Inc. executives. to the project.
Still, some Apple engineers on the project believe the company could launch a product within five to seven years if Apple follows its plans. People said the car is not at all close to the production stage, although they warned that deadlines could change. They asked not to be identified in sensitive internal work. Currently, most of the team works from home or in the office for a limited time, which decreases the company’s ability to develop a complete vehicle. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
An Apple car would rival Tesla’s electric vehicles and the offerings of companies such as Novelty Lucid Motors and established manufacturers such as Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz and General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet. A key differential would be Apple’s ability to integrate its self-promotion system, an expensive initiative that has driven the company to develop its own software, sensor hardware and chip technologies. The goal is to let a user enter their destination and drive there with little or no other commitment, depending on the people who know the project.
An Apple test car for the autonomous driving system in 2017
Bloomberg
Apple does not manufacture its own products and will likely take the same approach with a vehicle. However, it is not clear which company would ride the car. In its first attempt about five years ago, Apple He worked with engineers at Magna International Inc., a major contract manufacturer in the automotive industry. Reuters recently reported that Apple aims to start producing a car as early as 2024.
Apple has continued to investigate building its autonomous driving system for an external vehicle partner instead of its own vehicle, according to people, and could eventually abandon its own efforts in favor of this approach again.
The company first set out to build an electric car in 2014 and hired hundreds of hardware engineers for the effort before handing it out quickly around 2016 to focus on the autonomous car system. From 2016 to 2019, Apple cut hundreds of team workers. However, he retained some hardware engineers with experience in vehicle components who either stayed on the car project or worked on other initiatives.
In a signal that has now restarted the development of a vehicle, Apple in recent months transferred an executive known for his work in interior and exterior of vehicles to its vehicle team. In 2019, Apple hired former Tesla vice president of engineering Steve MacManus, but initially worked on projects outside the car. Now, MacManus is leading a multi-employee development group focused on interiors, fabrics, vehicle testing and vehicle manufacturing, people with knowledge of the issue said. He reports to Doug Field, a Tesla vehicle engineer who leads the Apple car project on a day-to-day basis.
Apple also recently hired Jonathan Sive, a vehicle engineer for BMW AG, Tesla and Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, as senior manager of the automobile project. In 2019, Apple touched on Michael Schwekutsch, Tesla’s former vice president in charge of transmission systems, who was added to a growing list of Tesla employees working on the vehicle effort.
In late 2020, Apple also hired another former Tesla vice president, Stuart Bowers, according to someone familiar with the move. He led Tesla’s auto-driving technology team until mid-2019 and he was executive resident at venture capital firm Greylock Partners until July, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Apple’s automotive team is full of dozens of ex-Tesla and freelance hardware engineers. In total, Apple has several hundred engineers working on the project, with most of them developing the autonomous car system instead of the complete vehicle.
John Giannandrea
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Late last year, Apple moved the project under the direction of John Giannandrea, head of artificial intelligence, suggesting that most of the development work remains on the underlying standalone software.
Read more: Apple shifts the leadership of the autonomous car unit to the head of AI
The smallest hardware team works on vehicle dynamics, traction trains, safety mechanics and battery technology. It also tries to re-imagine the interior of a car for a future in which people drive passively instead of driving.
In recent months, Apple has released job listings indicating that this vehicle is on the rise. The company is looking for a senior engineer to integrate “audio controllers, tuners, speakers, microphones, cable buses, power supplies, wireless communications and antennas” into standalone systems.
Another job listing asks an engineer with experience in LED lighting to provide “a fully validated system ready for volume production,” suggesting that the company’s stand-alone work is being designed to be produced. en masse. The company has also published listed for engineers to work on “high voltage” battery systems, a key component of electric cars.
Apple’s chip unit, led by Johny Srouji, also plays an important role in the development of the car, according to people. Since 2018, Srouji’s team has developed a custom arm-based chip with an important focus on machine learning processing to power the underlying autonomous car system.
The company has been testing autonomous technology on public roads since 2017. In 2019, the company’s test vehicles drove an average of about 118 kilometers before a human safety driver had to take control. That exceeded the mile by decoupling in 2018, according to data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The company has 66 cars in its fleet, according to the California DMV. This exceeds the 55 vehicles allowed in mid-2018.