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 in its infancy, according to people with knowledge of the effort.
The technology giant based in Cupertino, California, has a small team of hardware engineers who develop drive systems, interior and exterior design of the vehicle, in order to finally deliver a vehicle. This is a more ambitious goal than in previous years, when the project focused mainly on creating a self-driving system. The company also added several former directors of Tesla Inc.
However, some Apple engineers in the project believe that the company could launch a product in five to seven years if Apple continues its plans. The car is not approaching the production stage, people said, although they warned that the deadlines may change. They asked not to be identified when discussing sensitive internal work. Most of the team currently works either from home or in the office for a limited period of time, slowing down the company’s ability to develop a complete vehicle. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
An Apple car would rival electric vehicles from Tesla and offers from companies such as the upcoming Lucid Motors and well-known manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz Daimler AG and Chevrolet General Motors Co. A key differentiator would be Apple’s ability to integrate its autopilot system, an expensive initiative that led the company to develop its own software technologies, sensor hardware and chips. The purpose is to allow the user to enter their destination and be driven there with little or no other involvement, according to people familiar with the project.
An Apple test car for the automatic driving system in 2017
Bloomberg
Apple does not produce its own products and will probably adopt the same approach as a vehicle. However, it is not clear which company would assemble the car. In the first attempt about five years ago, Apple worked with engineers at Magna International Inc., a leading contract manufacturer in the automotive industry. Reuters recently reported that Apple plans to start producing a car in 2024.
Apple has continued to investigate building its self-driving system for a third-party car partner, rather than for its own vehicle, people said, and could eventually give up its own efforts in favor of this approach.
The company first set out to build an electric car in 2014, hiring hundreds of hardware engineers for the effort before quickly repairing it around 2016 to focus on the self-driving car system. From 2016 to 2019, Apple eliminated hundreds of workers from the team. However, it has maintained some hardware engineers with experience in automotive components who have either stayed on the automotive project or worked on other initiatives.
In a sign that it has now restarted the development of a vehicle, Apple has in recent months moved a director known for his work inside and outside the vehicle to his team of cars. In 2019, Apple hired former Tesla Vice President Steve MacManus, but initially worked on unrelated projects. Now, MacManus is leading a multi-employee development group focused on machine interiors, fabrics, machine testing and vehicle production, said people with knowledge on the subject. He reports to Doug Field, a former Tesla senior engineer who runs the Apple car project every day.
Apple also recently hired Jonathan Sive, a vehicle engineer at BMW AG, Tesla, and Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo Company, as senior project manager. In 2019, Apple banned Michael Schwekutsch, the former Tesla vice president in charge of drive systems, adding to a growing list of former Tesla employees working on the vehicle’s effort.
At the end of 2020, Apple hired another former Tesla vice president, Stuart Bowers, according to someone familiar with the move. He led the Tesla self-driving technology team until mid-2019 and was a executive director at venture capital firm Greylock Partners until July, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The Apple car team is full of dozens of other former Tesla hardware engineers and drivers. In total, Apple has several hundred engineers working on the project, most of whom are developing the self-driving car system, rather than the full-fledged vehicle.
John Giannandrea
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Late last year, Apple moved the project under the leadership of John Giannandrea, the head of artificial intelligence, suggesting that most of the development work remains on basic standalone software.
Read more: Apple transfers control of the self-driving car unit to the head of the AI
The smaller hardware team works on vehicle dynamics, drive trains, safety mechanics and battery technology. He also tries to reimagine the interior of a car for a future in which people travel passively, rather than drive.
In recent months, Apple has posted job listings indicating that this vehicle is on the rise. The company is the search for a chief engineer to integrate “audio drivers, tuners, speakers, microphones, wired buses, power supplies, wireless communications and antennas” into autonomous systems.
Another job listing requires an experienced LED lighting engineer to provide “a fully validated system ready for volume production,” suggesting that the company’s self-employment is designed to eventually be produced in series. The company also published listings for engineers working on “high voltage” battery systems, a key component of electric cars.
The Apple chip unit, led by Johny Srouji, also plays a role in the development of the car, people said. Since 2018, Srouji’s team has developed a custom arm-based chip with a strong focus on automatic machine learning to power the driving 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 miles before a human safety driver was forced to take control. This increased from one mile per decoupling in 2018, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The company has 66 cars in its fleet, according to DMV in California. It exceeds 55 vehicles allowed since mid-2018.