The secretive Apple Car project continues to trundle along with the company still working on whatever Project Titan really is. Now, a new report shows that Apple has added more test drivers to the mix.
While there are more drivers testing the Apple Car than there were in January 2023, they haven't been given any extra cars to put through their paces, the report notes.
It still isn't all that clear what Apple has planned for the Apple Car, or indeed if it will ever sell a fully-fledged vehicle. But it's more than clear that the company is working on something related to a car that can drive itself.
Self-driven to distraction
Project Titan is a name that we've been hearing for a long, long time at this point. It's also a project that has gone through multiple team leads, engineers, and car experts. We've heard rumors that Apple is working with car manufacturers while others suggest that Apple only wants to create self-driving tech and then sell it on. Whatever the plan really is, one thing we do know is that Apple has self-driving cars on the streets of California.
That means that Apple appears on the California DMV Autonomous Vehicles Program which in turn means that we know how many cars are on the road and how many people are registered to drive them.
In the case of Apple, it now has 201 people registered as able to test the self-driving vehicles — an increase on the 196 that were doing so in January. But the company's fleet of autonomous cars remains stable at 67, although that number is lower than it was back in July 2021, MacReports notes.
Despite all of this, Apple still hasn't applied for a driverless permit in California. Currently, cars from Waymo, Cruise, Nuro, and others are all driving themselves under such permits.
The DMV also shares details on reported collisions as well, with Apple reporting a single collision since January 13, 2023. And the car wasn't driving itself when it happened.
“On February 21st, a test vehicle operating in manual driving mode was making a u-turn from Westbound to Eastbound Homestead Road at the intersection with Kennewick Drive in Sunnyvale when the right front tire and rim made contact with the curb," the report reads. "No injuries were reported and law enforcement was not called to the scene. The test vehicle sustained damage to the right front rim.”
That means we can probably say that even Apple's best iPhones crash more than its cars.
