Apple Car on its way with in-house battery; may launch in 2024
Apple Inc is reportedly working on self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a car or vehicle for consumers.
Apple Inc is reportedly working on self-driving car technology and is planning to produce a car or vehicle for consumers by 2024. However, it may be delayed to 2025 due to the pandemic.
The efforts towards the self-driving car reportedly started in 2014, and the Cupertino-based tech giant even roped in its former employee Doug Field — who had also worked in Tesla — in 2018 to oversee the project.
In 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about Apple’s autonomous driving software.
"We're focusing on autonomous systems. It's a core technology that we view as very important. We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on,” he had said.
According to the media reports, the car will have an in-house battery, which will reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle's range.
Sources familiar to the Apple car project told Reuters, "As for the car’s battery, Apple plans to use a unique mono cell design that bulks up the individual cells in the battery and frees up space inside the battery pack. That design means more active material can be packed inside the battery, giving the car a potentially longer range."
Apple CEO Tim Cook
The Reuters report added that Apple has decided to tap outside partners for elements of the system, including lidar sensors, and that the said car might feature multiple lidar sensors.
Lidar is a method for measuring distances by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflection with a sensor. Apple may use some of its own sensors too, as its latest devices — iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro — both sports lidar sensors.
The report also quotes a source close to the development saying that the Apple car is going to be the "next level", and that it will be like when people saw iPhone for the very first time in 2007.
YourStory has reached out to Apple for a comment, and we will update the story as soon as we hear back from them.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta