Apple’s on-again, off-again entry into the automotive industry is the subject of a great many rumors. Nothing is official yet, Cupertino is famously secretive, but a recent report suggests that the tech giant’s Project Titan division is now hoping to master autonomous driving.
Citing anonymous insiders, Bloomberg reported that Apple has shifted its car-building project into high gear. We mean that metaphorically: the vehicle will allegedly be entirely electric, meaning it likely won’t have gears to shift, and the development team hopes to integrate a high degree of automated technology into the platform. While numerous companies from the car and tech industries are rushing to make autonomous driving a reality, nearly all agree that a long list of legal and technological hurdles stand in the way of a widespread release.
The report adds that developer Kevin Lynch, the man responsible for the Apple Watch, is in charge of Project Titan. His goal is to release a fully autonomous car by 2025; that’s a tall order to fill in merely four years. If the technology isn’t ready by the middle of the 2020s, Apple could either delay the launch or bring its long-rumored car to the market without the ability to drive itself all the time, Bloomberg learned.
Mastering autonomous driving would give Apple bragging rights, but that’s not the team’s only motivation. It’s a feat that would provide designers the freedom to bring the lounge-like interiors we’ve seen highlighted at major auto shows around the world to production; in theory, an autonomous iCar would have no steering wheel, no pedals, no dashboard, and a completely rejigged interior. The notion of a driver’s seat flies out the window if the driver is a computer. In turn, Apple could give users a unique travel experience.
Interestingly, the report suggests that Apple is more interested in selling its car to private motorists than in amassing a fleet of shuttles it can deploy in major urban centers like Waymo is doing and Argo A.I. plans to do with help from Volkswagen. This is a business model that puts even more pressure on the team developing the vehicle because the margin of error is much thinner. To that end, Apple has hired several experienced engineers from the automotive side of the industry, including experts from Volvo, General Motors-owned Cruise, and Tesla.
Apple hasn’t commented on the report. If it’s accurate, we’ll likely hear more about what Project Titan is up to in the coming months — and we’ll start seeing camouflaged prototypes being put through their paces on public roads sooner or later. In the meantime, rival Sony quietly built an electric (but not autonomous) sedan called Vision S, unveiled it at CES 2020, road-tested it in Europe, and made it look easy.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.