Malcolm Owen
Apple has increased the number of drivers for its fleet of autonomous vehicles, with the headcount of testers for its self-driving vehicle systems now at 137 people.
Apple has been steadily increasing its group of drivers used to collect data and trial its self-driving car technology on roads in the United States. The company has continued the upward trend by adding more people to the roster.
In data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles seen by MacReports, Apple has increased the number of driver permits by 23, bringing the total number of its drivers up to 137. In September, the count was at 114, while in August and May, it was 92 drivers and 76 drivers respectively.
While the number of drivers has gone up, the number of vehicles being used for testing remains the same, at 69 cars. Meanwhile, companies including Mercedes Benz, Waymo, GM Cruise, Zoox, and Pony have all added more cars to their fleets.
The increase in driver numbers still puts Apple far behind other companies. For example, Cruise has 992 permits, Waymo has 1,628, and Zoox has 315.
The latest figures also reveal that Apple has still yet to apply for a driverless vehicle permit. Of the others, Cruise has increased its driverless fleet from 5 to 20 permits, with Waymo still in the lead with 34.
Data on collisions for autonomous vehicles show that Apple has added one more to its records, bringing it to a total of six collisions on file.
Apple is widely thought to be working on its own self-driving systems, possibly as a precursor to its own "Apple Car," under the internal name of "Project Titan." Various reports have covered restructuring of the effort, and even supposed discussions about car production, but it does seem that the project is continuing to grow within the company.
In October, Apple posted a job listing searching for a "Radar Test Engineer" for the Special Projects Group. On November 5, Apple hired a former Tesla engineer, seemingly to work on software for the vehicle.
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69 cars had 6 collisions? That's not good.
Perhaps Apple should focus on the user interface and leave the self driving part up to the experts? Partner with NVIDIA who seems to have a really good system in development and is open to working with other companies.
I really hope Apple are working on a better version of Apple Maps for Car Play, along with this Apple Car Development. I am halfway back to Florida, having driven from Florida to the top of New Hampshire this summer. The inability to set waypoints is so frustrating, since Apple Maps rarely chooses the path I want to take if given a destination hundreds of miles away. I use 84 and 81 rather than I95 for much of the journey, as an example. This required selecting intermediate destinations as there are no waypoints allowed.
This all combined means you can't plot an entire trip with hotel stops and you can't force the route to deviate from Apple's choices easily. The solution was to use lots of short distance destinations, a colossal waste of time not to mention no overall trip plan possible.
Setting each short-hop destination while driving with road noise is also very frustrating as Siri rarely hears the correct words the first few attempts and the hilarious misunderstandings cease to be funny when in fast moving, heavy traffic on an interstate with a major lane choice looming. /rant