Apple's self-driving car test fleet up to 45 vehicles navigating California roads
Apple is rapidly growing the number of self-driving test vehicles it has in its home state, putting it at second place there behind only General Motors' Cruise subsidiary.
While Apple grew from 3 to 27 between April 2017 and January 2018, since then numbers have shot up to 45, the Financial Times said on Tuesday, citing data from California's Department of Motor Vehicles. Cruise has 110 cars.
Behind Apple are Tesla with 39, and Uber with 29. Uber has temporarily suspended testing in the wake of an Arizona fatality.
Alphabet's Waymo -- which is nominally planning to launch a commercial ridehailing service in Arizona later this year -- has scaled back from 100 Californian vehicles in June 2017 to just 24, although its Arizona fleet has grown. It's not clear whether Waymo might postpone plans in the wake of Uber's accident.
Apple's long-term plans are still shrouded. Though the company has had no choice but to acknowledge self-driving tests, it hasn't said what if anything it wants to do with the technology.
The company is expected to produce a platform for ridehailing services, most likely in partnership with third parties. Alternately it could revert to designing its own electric vehicle, but the company would need to contract with outside factories to build it.
While Apple grew from 3 to 27 between April 2017 and January 2018, since then numbers have shot up to 45, the Financial Times said on Tuesday, citing data from California's Department of Motor Vehicles. Cruise has 110 cars.
Behind Apple are Tesla with 39, and Uber with 29. Uber has temporarily suspended testing in the wake of an Arizona fatality.
Alphabet's Waymo -- which is nominally planning to launch a commercial ridehailing service in Arizona later this year -- has scaled back from 100 Californian vehicles in June 2017 to just 24, although its Arizona fleet has grown. It's not clear whether Waymo might postpone plans in the wake of Uber's accident.
Apple's long-term plans are still shrouded. Though the company has had no choice but to acknowledge self-driving tests, it hasn't said what if anything it wants to do with the technology.
The company is expected to produce a platform for ridehailing services, most likely in partnership with third parties. Alternately it could revert to designing its own electric vehicle, but the company would need to contract with outside factories to build it.
Comments
Electric Cars are the future but where will all of the ‘extra’ electricity come from? Nuclear power?
That's not unusual for any of their stuff though. Develop the thing and then work with a manufacturer on mass production.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/29/waymo-orders-thousands-of-pacificas-for-2018-self-driving-fleet-rollout/
Nuclear has been unfairly attacked by uninformed, hysterical critics. Since 1946 there has only been only nuclear incident in which people died, and that was an essentially unregulated facility in Chernobyl. France derives more than half its electricity from nuclear since the 1970s without incident.
Oil and coal economic interests have funded all anti-nuclear initiatives in the US.
Driverless vehicles are logging in excess of 20 million miles per year in the United States. There have been two fatalities. In the first the driver of the semi-trailer a Tesla struck (killing the driver) was cited for making an illegal left turn in front of the Tesla. Preliminary police reports indicate that the self driving vehicle involved in the pedestrian fatality was driving below the 40mph speed limit, and that the pedestrian stepped in front of the vehicle, mid-block. This incident happened at night.
I hope the same degree of reporting on the cause, as there has been on the incident itself, occurs. I doubt it will.
Recharging electric cars could be a great way to balance out the variable nature of renewable sources. One approach could be to structure electricity prices so that car charging gets a discount during peak generation times.
How do you figure nuclear has a better health/safety record that wind and solar?
I don't see how anything else makes sense.
Pour some out for steam... 😢
Renewables are just shy of nuclear.
Within renewables, wind is just shy of hydro.
I agree that nuclear has a better record than coal.
But wind and solar have been growing very fast, and renewables are closing in on nuclear as a share of US electricity production. So I don’t think it makes sense to ignore them.
So “only useful on days with wind above 20 MPH” and “only useful half the time, maximum, and pray for no clouds” compared to “always useful, always powered, always providing.” Yay. What a future.
Nuclear power is historically, statistically very safe, but there's a lot of fear involved in what one accident/malicious attack could result in. Its safety record could quickly go from really good to incredibly bad instantly.