Despite previous setbacks, Apple is still committed to building up a presence in the ever-growing autonomous driving space. Multiple reports suggest that Apple is in talks about acquiring self-driving vehicle start-up Drive.ai. This deal would give Apple access to Drive.ai’s workforce — and most importantly, its engineers.
Apple’s autonomous vehicles (AVs) logged nearly 80,000 test miles in California in the year ended November 30, 2018. However, its cars disengaged and required a human operator to intervene once every 1.15 miles on average. Earlier this year, Apple reassigned 200 employees working on Project Titan (the autonomous tech initiative), suggesting the company could have been shifting its focus elsewhere.
However, if the Drive.ai acquisition were to go through, it would get another shot in this space.
Apart from Drive.ai, reports also claimed that Apple was holding talks with multiple suppliers of next-generation LiDAR sensors for use in its AVs, while simultaneously continuing to develop proprietary versions of the tech.
With so many tech giants and start-ups placing heavy bets on the autonomous vehicle space, this is definitely an opportunity that Apple cannot pass on.
These acquisitions would give Apple a major advantage in many sectors of the autonomous vehicle space, including licensing software, selling hardware, providing self-driving services, or even launching new in-car experiences. These companies are also well-known for developing some of the most popular hardware and services used today, the experience they can bring to their autonomous vehicle ventures. By applying this expertise to self-driving tech, they can tap into the huge global market for autonomous vehicles, which is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 39%, from $54 Billion in 2019 to $557 Billion by 2026, according to Allied Market Research.
Analysts and techies around the world will now be watching out for the next moves that Apple makes in this space.
