How Is Apple's Autonomous Vehicle Program Doing, You Ask?

Back in 2015, it was rumored that Apple was sinking significant resources and manpower into an electric vehicle program that also incorporated autonomous driving. But updates on “Project Titan” have been infrequent. Apple takes pains to keep its self-driving program under wraps.

There are, however, ways to track its progress. Since Apple tests its vehicles in California, it must submit an annual report to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles outlining how many times human safety drivers retake control or interfere with the vehicle’s self-driving systems, as well as a tally of total miles driven.

Based on this metric alone, Waymo appears to be the industry leader, with “disengagements” occuring every 11,000 miles. General Motors’ Cruise came in second with roughly 5,200 miles between periods of human intervention. But what about Apple? Apparently, the firm is facing some rather strong headwinds. The company claims a human had to retake control every 1.1 miles.

Bloomberg, which first shared the DMV report, was careful to note that this single-metric overview only provides a glimpse into autonomous testing programs, and may not be representative of the overall situation. While absolutely true, one cannot ignore how wanting Apple’s progress appears to be.

Some of this could be attributed to safety concerns. None of the company’s self-driving vehicles registered within the state have ever been reported being involved in a serious accident. But they have been minor incidents attributed to other vehicles. We’re hunting for a silver lining here. No matter how you slice the situation, Apple is nowhere near where it hoped to be by 2019.

From Bloomberg:

In 2017, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told Bloomberg Television that the company’s work on autonomous systems is the “the mother of all AI projects” and said it’s probably one of the most difficult artificial intelligence efforts to work on. Last year, the company hired Doug Field, a former chief engineer for Tesla, to oversee its project alongside Bob Mansfield, who used to be senior vice president of hardware engineering.

In January, Apple scaled back Project Titan again, laying off some employees and assigning others to different artificial intelligence teams within the company. Over the course of the last six months, two employees on the team allegedly attempted to steal trade secrets for China-based self-driving car companies. According to related lawsuits, Apple has about 1,200 people working on the project.

There were also layoffs in 2016, following a period where the company convinced Mansfield to return and take over Project Titan and reboot the seemingly stalled program. The following year, it was discovered that Apple had moved away from attempting to build a complete vehicle, focusing instead on autonomous tech that could be adapted for use in other vehicles.

However, one the more interesting bits of news came in April of 2017, when the company issued a letter to the California Department of Motor Vehicles asking it to reevaluate its reporting requirements. It claimed that disengagements should only be reported when a driver has to take over to avoid an accident or keep the car from breaking the law. The reason for this is that not all miles are comparable. Some tests periods specifically deal with short trips requiring frequent stops.

Last months’ layoffs are believed to have affected around 200 employees, though the company’s efforts were said to be on the upswing. Its self-driving fleet, which started 2018 with around 30 cars, is now believed to number closer to 70. Apple has clearly not given up on Titan. Still, with the company apparently so far behind the rest of the pack, one wonders how long this might remain the case.

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