Apple grows its self-driving car team with new test drivers
- aug
- 09
Image credit: The Verge
What you need to know
- 33 more test drivers added
- 69 self-driving cars in California
- 143 certified drivers behind the wheel
Apple continues to invest in self-driving
Apple has continued to build its self-driving team by adding more certified drivers to man its fleet of test cars in California. Originally reported by 9to5Mac, documents from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows that Apple has hired on 33 more drivers to get behind the wheel of its fleet of 69 self-driving test cars in the state.
This brings the number of drivers manning the fleet to 143 which, while comparable to Tesla, is still well behind over self-driving test fleets from companies in the business. Waymo has 135 cars and 321 drivers on the road, but the real shocker is GM who runs away with 258 cars and 760 drivers.
Apple has long been expected to enter into the autonomous driving market in some capacity, with rumors of Project Titan going back as far as 2014. Since then, it has been incredibly vague as to what exactly Project Titan will form into, but Apple continues to invest in the area, recently acquiring autonomous driving startup Drive.ai in June and a number of engineers from competitors like Tesla.
It always hasn't ended up with additions, however. Earlier in the year, Apple laid off around 200 employees from the project, saying that the layoffs were due to restructuring. While it could be easy to be skeptical at that, it seems so, as the company has continued to invest hundreds of millions more into self-driving with continued acquisitions and high-level hires. This latest news is just another bread crumb in the long-running saga that is the mystery of Project Titan.