Apple plans self-drive shuttle to ferry Silicon Valley staff
Apple plans self-drive shuttle to ferry Silicon Valley staff:- Apple is working on a self-driving shuttle that could ferry employees between its offices in Silicon Valley, according to people familiar with the planned service, as its autonomous car project continues to evolve.
The scheme, which has not yet gone into production, would see Apple teaming up with a traditional automotive manufacturer to build a small bus that could help staff travel between its new campus, Apple Park, and its older network of offices which are scattered around Cupertino and Sunnyvale, people familiar with Apple’s plans said.
The shuttle service is known internally as PAIL, standing for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, referring to its older campus.
Apple declined to comment on the plans, which were first reported by the New York Times.
The experiment is similar to other small-scale tests in limited geographic areas run by the likes of Alphabet’s autonomous car unit, Waymo, and Uber. A service that carries only employees, rather than members of the public, would probably be easier to launch in the near term, by simplifying some legal and regulatory requirements.
However, PAIL also shows how Apple is still trying to figure out how to tackle the vast yet complex transportation market, and how best to make use of its particular combination of expertise, branding and technology, as it looks for new businesses beyond the iPhone.
“They could make a better Tesla tomorrow, but it is not clear they can do something uniquely Apple,” said Benedict Evans, a partner at technology investor Andreessen Horowitz. “That’s the thing I think they’re wrestling with — how can they change the experience in ways other people cannot?”
Apple’s automotive project, code-named “Project Titan”, began in 2014 as an attempt to design and build an electric car from the ground up. The iPhone maker poached staff from traditional automotive manufacturers as well as its Silicon Valley neighbours such as Tesla and Google to assemble its team.
At one point, Apple considered acquiring McLaren Technology Group, the British supercar engineer, to accelerate its efforts, though no deal was completed.
Last year Titan changed direction after Apple veteran Bob Mansfield took over leadership of the project, resulting in the departure of dozens of staff last summer, people familiar with the matter have said.
Since then, Apple has refocused its efforts on developing the autonomous systems that are necessary to power a fully self-driving vehicle.
In recent months its efforts have been forced out of its secret labs and into the public domain by the regulatory scrutiny that testing on real roads requires. Apple received a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California in April and its engineers have been piloting three Lexus SUVs around Silicon Valley since then.
Tim Cook, Apple chief executive, acknowledged its work in an earnings call this month.
“We are very focused on autonomous systems from a core technology point of view,” Mr Cook said. “We do have a large project going and are making a big investment in this.”
Calling autonomous driving “the mother of all AI projects”, Mr Cook hinted that the technology could be used “in a variety of ways . . . a vehicle is only one”.
Source:- https://www.ft.com/content/e6bb7b26-87a0-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787
