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US-APPLE-AUTOS
FILE PHOTO: The company's logo is seen outside Austria's first
Apple store during a media preview in Vienna
FILE PHOTO: The company's logo is seen outside Austria's first
Apple store, which opens on February 24, during a media preview
in Vienna, Austria, February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter
Bader/File Photo
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Apple executives have never publicly spoken about the company's
self-driving car program, but filings in a criminal court case
last month confirmed that the company had at least 5,000
employees working on the project and that it was working on
circuit boards and a "proprietary chip" related to self-driving
cars.
Apple is entering a crowded field where rivals such as Alphabet
Inc's <GOOGL.O> Waymo unit and traditional carmakers such as
General Motors Co's <GM.N> Cruise Automation, as well as
startups such as Silicon Valley's Zoox, are pouring billions of
dollars into cars that can drive themselves.
On Aug. 24, one of Apple's Lexus RX 450h self-driving test
vehicles in "autonomous mode" was merging south on the Lawrence
Expressway in Sunnyvale, California at less than 1 mile per hour
when it was rear-ended by a 2016 Nissan Leaf going about 15
miles per hour, according to the report posted on the California
Department of Motor Vehicles website.
The accident happened at about 3 p.m. as the Apple vehicle had
slowed and was waiting for a safe gap in traffic to complete the
merge, the report said.
Both vehicles sustained damage but there were no injuries, the
report said. Under a safety plan filed with California
regulators, a human driver must be able to take control of
Apple's self-driving test cars.
An Apple spokesman confirmed that the company had filed the
report but did not comment further. He declined to respond to
questions about whether the trailing car could have been at
fault.
Apple's efforts remained shrouded in secrecy until years after
its rivals like Google had begun testing on public roads. The
iPhone maker's first public acknowledgement of interest in the
field came in a letter to U.S. transportation regulators in late
2016 urging them not to restrict testing of the vehicles.
Last year, Apple secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in
California. It has been testing cars on the road since last year
and now has permits for more than 60 vehicles. Apple researchers
also last year published their first public research on cars, a
software system that could help spot pedestrians more readily.
The safety of self-driving cars has become a source of concern
for U.S. transportation regulators this year after one of Uber
Technologies Inc's [UBER.UL] vehicles struck and killed a woman
in March in Arizona, prompting the company to shut down its
testing efforts for a time. Uber has said it plans to have
self-driving cars back on the road by the end of the year.
The California DMV said it has received it has received 95
autonomous vehicle collision reports as of Aug. 31. Dozens of
companies have received permits to test self-driving vehicles on
California roads, but those permits require the presence of a
human safety driver.
(Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in
Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by
Richard Chang and Cynthia Osterman)
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