Apple Car: Nobody’s at the wheel? ↦
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple’s focusing on a fully autonomous car for release as early as 2025:
Apple’s ideal car would have no steering wheel and pedals, and its interior would be designed around hands-off driving…. Though the company is pushing to not have a standard steering wheel, Apple has discussed equipping the car with an emergency takeover mode.
The idea of releasing a self-driving car isn’t new, or novel. Companies like Tesla and Waymo have been trying it for a while. But the idea of being so confident in your self-driving technology that you design the interior to not have driving controls at all? That’s beyond the beyond.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m tempted to call it a “moon shot”—a seemingly impossible task that can actually be accomplished with an enormous amount of investment, effort, and intelligence. But I’ll point out that one of the people trying to make a self-driving car is literally building a rocket to take people to the moon, and that effort seems more likely to succeed this decade than building a car that doesn’t have a steering wheel.
You can’t deny Apple’s ambition here. They seem to be of the opinion that if they can’t make a revolutionary car, they shouldn’t bother. Fair enough. Let’s see if it pays off for them.
