Apple postpones iCar, drops self-driving capability

News

December 8, 2022

By
Christoph Hammerschmidt

According to a Bloomberg report, Apple has scaled back its ambitious plans for a self-driving electric car and postponed the market launch date to 2026.

Originally, the vehicle was scheduled to appear at the market in 2025. What’s more, it’s not said to be a (fully) autonomous vehicle.

Bloomberg cites “people familiar with the matter” and further reports that the Apple Car will offer some automated driving – however without elaborating. In any case, a human driver must be able to intervene in difficult situations which hints at SAE level 4 at most. Steering wheel and pedals will therefore also be installed in the vehicle, which will probably only be able to drive autonomously on the highway. According to the report, it will also be possible for the driver to take his eyes off the road when driving on the highway. However, this function will only be available in North America at launch.

To find its way around its surroundings, the vehicle is said to be equipped with lidar sensors, cameras and ultrasonic sensors. The data will be processed with a purpose built SoC, which is almost ready, according to the report, and offers a computing power of four M1 Ultra – the most powerful processor chip used in Apple’s computers.

www.apple.com

Apple investment in Kia feeds speculations about iCar

Kia, Hyundai backpedaling on Apple cooperation

Foxconn to use NXP technology for EV platforms

Linked Articles