Apple Car rumored to run new custom OS to control all aspects of driving

A new industry report claims that Apple is planning to have its own centrally integrated OS for the long-rumored Apple Car, similar to how Tesla has one system operating driving controls and entertainment.

The giant majority of patents and other regulatory filings regarding the forthcoming "Apple Car" have concentrated on hardware issues. Nonetheless, it's unlikely that the self-driving vehicle would ship with nothing more than an expanded version of CarPlay.

Digitimes is now reporting from its supply chain sources, though, that Apple is specifically developing an OS that would be "a centrally integrated operating system (OS) like Tesla."

It would be like Tesla in the sense that it is a single system that controls all aspects of the car. So it would range from driving features such as navigation and lane control, through on-board Apple Music integration, and air conditioning.

However, Tesla's OS is not entirely developed by the car company, and instead is a customized version of Linux Ubuntu.

Separately, Digitimes also reports sources saying that a Korean company "will assist in the development of the self-driving sensor" that will be part of the Domain Control Unit (DCU).

A DCU is a dedicated unit handling the most demanding parts of car automation, such as processing the data provided by sensors ranging from cameras to LiDAR.

This report about development of a "carOS" kind of system, and of the DCU, comes as other rumors suggest work has stalled on the "Apple Car." It's rumored that Apple's car team has been dissolved, although other sources continue to say a 2025 launch date is still possible.

Digitimes has a strong track record as it pertains to Apple's hardware supply chain. It has a significantly poorer one for the conclusions it draws about Apple's plans.

14 Comments

crowley 10431 comments · 15 Years

About 2 years ago

Definitely won't be an early adopter on this. Apple make pretty good consumer operating systems, but not nearly good enough that I'd trust them with my life driving down a high speed roadway.

M68000 887 comments · 7 Years

crowley said:

Definitely won't be an early adopter on this. Apple make pretty good consumer operating systems, but not nearly good enough that I'd trust them with my life driving down a high speed roadway.

Ironically, just heard radio news about some Tesla driver doing 83mph on freeway and the car locked up or shut down because of computer glitch. He was able to eventually stop with brakes but had car towed to be looked at. Having too much computer “control” can be a bad thing. Cars just keep getting more and more reliant on computers. There has to be a balance, I guess I will take heat for these comments but that’s how I feel.

avon b7 8046 comments · 20 Years

M68000 said:

crowley said:

Definitely won't be an early adopter on this. Apple make pretty good consumer operating systems, but not nearly good enough that I'd trust them with my life driving down a high speed roadway.

Ironically, just heard radio news about some Tesla driver doing 83mph on freeway and the car locked up or shut down because of computer glitch. He was able to eventually stop with brakes but had car towed to be looked at. Having too much computer “control” can be a bad thing. Cars just keep getting more and more reliant on computers. There has to be a balance, I guess I will take heat for these comments but that’s how I feel.

The use of 'computers' has probably saved far more lives than it has cost and computers (chips) have been decisive on cars for decades now.

In its heyday, Motorola claimed that its embedded PowerPC chips were on around half of the ABS systems on cars worldwide.

The Tesla situation you described happened in a non-autonomous car (Seat Leon) I was in over 10 years ago.

It was speeding down the motorway when a beep was heard, the steering stiffened and all the driver could do was 'guide' it through three lanes to the hard shoulder where it simply switched off.

We were lucky there weren't any other cars in those lanes we crossed.

It was a pretty scary moment but the garage said nothing had been registered on the onboard computer.

We never knew what caused it and the car started normally after the driver had recovered from the scare.

It is very unlikely that Apple is going to re-invent the wheel with regards to on board software. It will probably licence existing solutions and tie it all together at the front end.

Existing solutions and OS options are already shipping which do this on 'autonomous' cars. Basically adding 'sensing' capabilities and communications capabilities to the myriad of computing processes that have been around for decades.

It requires some serious computing power within the vehicle in the form of 'mobile data centers' and low latency communications with cloud, road infrastructure and other vehicles but all this is already shipping.

One of the biggest hurdles will be deciding which communications technologies win out in the 'vehicle to everything' stakes but current solutions can, in theory, be updated to handle that.

meterestnz 83 comments · 6 Years

crowley said:

Definitely won't be an early adopter on this. Apple make pretty good consumer operating systems, but not nearly good enough that I'd trust them with my life driving down a high speed roadway.

Ironically, much the same words were used by early pilots of airbus aircraft when the highly automated operating systems was first introduced

Mondain 22 comments · 3 Years

crowley said:

Definitely won't be an early adopter on this. Apple make pretty good consumer operating systems, but not nearly good enough that I'd trust them with my life driving down a high speed roadway.

Agreed. "...run custom OS to control all aspects of driving" sounds frightening.

From another front, I recall an interview with some CEO where they cast doubt on the ability of Apple to make and sell cars. I can't recall the exact quote, but the idea was that Apple is simply not organized in such a way to be able to make and maintain products that can (and should) last for decades.