It’s been nearly a year since we’ve heard any concrete news about Apple’s electric vehicle project, but now new reports claim Apple has completed “much of the core work” on a new processor that will power its secretive autonomous electric vehicle, codenamed Titan. Apple has reportedly accelerated its timeline for the car project, with a new target of launching in 2025.
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Apple’s own silicon team designed the chip, which is the “most advanced component” that’s been developed for the project so far, according to reporter Mark Gurman. The Cupertino firm is going to start putting the new chip through its paces in the real world in its fleet of test vehicles in California. According to the report, it hopes to make a vehicle with “stronger safeguards than what’s available from Tesla and Waymo.”
Project Titan has changed multiple times in its years of rumoured development, having started in 2014. The goal is now to create an autonomous electric vehicle that doesn’t even have a steering wheel. The interior would be spacious and look more like the limousine-style seating arrangement.
It isn’t clear what the ultimate use case for these vehicles will be, however. Some believe Apple will create a self-driving fleet to compete with Uber, Lyft, and Waymo, but the latest report claims that the “more likely scenario” is that Apple will sell the cars to individuals.
Unlike some other electric vehicles projects, Apple isn’t planning to develop its own proprietary charging infrastructure (which is very unlike Apple). It is said that Apple wants to make the vehicle compatible with the “combined charging system,” or CCS standard, which would make it possible to charge the vehicle at most of the shared charging infrastructure. It may not be as efficient as Tesla’s Supercharger infrastructure, but will mean that it can tap into an already existent infrastructure.
