UPDATED 16:46 EDT / NOVEMBER 18 2021

EMERGING TECH

Report: Apple could launch self-driving electric car in 2025

Apple Inc. could bring its long-rumored electric car to market as soon as 2025 and with a “full self-driving system” onboard, Bloomberg reported today. 

The 2025 target launch date is said to represent an acceleration of Apple’s development roadmap. According to Bloomberg’s sources, some engineers at the company were as of earlier this year planning to launch the car in five to seven years, or as late as 2028. But it appears that the timeline was accelerated after Apple executive Kevin Lynch was appointed to lead the company’s car initiative earlier this year.

Over recent years, the iPhone maker has reportedly considered taking its car initiative in one of two directions. The first approach considered by the company involved launching a vehicle with partly autonomous driving features similar to those found in some current cars. The second, more complicated option floated by the iPhone maker was to ship a vehicle with fully autonomous driving features. 

Apple’s engineers are now reportedly focusing their efforts on building the fully autonomous version of the car. 

Cars that can drive themselves without any human input have not yet been deployed on the road. It’s believed that the industry will take years to develop the technology necessary for fully autonomous vehicles. As a result, Apple’s plan to launch its car as soon as 2025 represents a major technical undertaking. 

According to today’s report, the 2025 target launch date is dependent on Apple’s ability to complete the self-driving system for the vehicle. The system is still in development. However, the company is said to have made an important step toward completing the project not long ago. 

Bloomberg reported that Apple recently “reached a key milestone in developing the car’s underlying self-driving system.” Additionally, the iPhone maker is said to have largely completed work on the processor it plans to use to power the vehicle.

The iPhone maker is no stranger to chip development: Apple designs the processors that power its mobile devices and latest Mac computers in-house. But building a chip for a self-driving car may prove more complicated. The artificial intelligence models that an autonomous driving system uses to navigate the road require significantly more computing capacity than a typical mobile device.

Previous reports indicate that Apple has assigned hundreds of employees to its vehicle development initiative, which is said to be known as Project Titan internally. The company is pursuing the effort as rival Alphabet Inc. also expands its autonomous vehicle operations. Waymo LLC, Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit, earlier this year raised $2.7 billion in funding to advance its product development and commercialization plans.

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