Apple has finally revealed its plans to invest in developing a self-driving car. in November, the Cupertino tech titan said it was investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the United States government agency that regulates everything related to transportation.
While rumors about Apple venturing into self-driving vehicle business have been floating for long, this is the first time the company has acknowledged that it is keen on developing automated vehicles. The company is "excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation," Apple said in its letter to the NHTSA obtained by CNET.
The multinational tech giant has also registered several car-related internet domains. Two such domains are apple.car and apple.auto. Large-scale investment in machine learning as well as autonomous systems led Apple to shoot the letter to the NHTSA; the report quoted a company spokesman as saying. He further said that Apple was keen on helping identify best practices in the industry.
In his five-page letter, Apple's director of product integrity Steve Kenner advised the NHTSA against introducing needless regulations regarding self-driving car testing. He also urged the regulators to treat all existing as well as new entrants into the field equally.
Kenner also suggested that all companies in the self-driving vehicle industry should share data regarding crashes and near-misses among themselves as well as the NHTSA with a view to develop a complete picture than what would be manageable by one company. This would help to design systems better, he opined.
At the same time, the letter emphasized that the privacy of no individual should be compromised while sharing data. Kenner recommended that both regulators and the industry should deal with the privacy issues related to collection, sharing and use of all automated vehicle data. According to him, this can be achieved effectively with help from privacy experts who are not from the automotive industry.
With its plans to launch its self-driving cars by 2021, Ford said in a press statement obtained by BBC that the company project was on the belief that Apple was developing one. Currently, Google is testing its self-driving cars on the roads, while electric car manufacturer Tesla had announced that all the cars it would develop henceforth will come with pre- installed self-driving hardware.
Watch the experience of riding in a Google self-driving car below: