The self driving electric car division by Apple Inc, namely Titan is presently the most hyped and anticipated project by Apple. The division is undergoing research and development and the research details has been kept top secret by the company. It has around 5000 members and the car is rumoured to be launched by 2020.However, there has been much controversy regarding the subject since apple fired 190 employees, mostly engineers. The lay-offs in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara will take result from April 2016 as stated in the detailed filing by apple with the Californian employment development section.
What’s The Word From Apple?
Earlier in January, CNBC reported that over 200 employees were removed in the same division within Apple. Apple did acknowledge that, but called them reconstruction rather than lay-offs. Their CEO defends the division by reassuring the investors that the division’s value to the brand does not only depend on their hiring rate. Following CNBC’s report Apple has furthermore stated that “some groups” has been moved to other departments in the company, like machine parts and hardware, etc. Cook has been notably giving more public statements about how health related projects are apple’s main priority and that it will be company’s best gifts to mankind.
Let’s Take A Look At The Project!
In the year 2018, Doug Firld, the former engineering associate president was recruited by apple, to lead their autonomous team. According to BBC’s report, by the same month Apple had 66 registered driverless cars, and with 111 drivers registered to operate those cars. Apple achieved the second highest amount of self driving vehicle in California after the General Motor’s sail which had hundred and four vehicles. Of the numerous number of road registered vehicles available, each one of them are fitted with humongous racks of radar sensors and LIDAR with cameras. These were being tested around San Francisco Bay region to ideal the sensors, computing system and software so that the vehicle could be deemed safe for use. The information provided by the California Department of Motor Vehicles later-on shed light on Apple’s self driving car’s performance. There has been an average of 1.1mile per disengagement, meaning, human intervention was necessary about once every mile.
The issue with the Chinese
Apple’s electric car scheme has not been a simple affair for the company, in addition to the fact that many employees have been assigned from the car project to other different divisions.In the past,few months back, two employees have been blamed of stealing important information and smuggling it to the Chinese rivals regarding this project.
Albeit this project began in 2014 and there have not been many official announcements from it; we rarely hear anything more other than speculations. In terms of performance also, Project Titan is far behind its competitors such as Alphabet Inc’s Waymo, General Motor’s Cruise, and Tesla. In comparison to the whooping 10 million miles covered by Waymo, Titan has only been able to login 79,745 miles till 1st December 2018.
