Apple won’t be building its own self-driving car.
Now, according to five unnamed sources, the company, which sought partnerships with the luxury carmakers BMW and Mercedes-Benz to develop an all-electric self-driving car, has signed a deal with Volkswagen to turn some of the carmaker’s new T6 Transporter vans into Apple’s self-driving shuttles for employees. This project, in turn, is said to be behind schedule and consuming nearly all of the Apple car team’s attention,
It’s not quite the equivalent of the bank robbery scene in “Heat”, but it’s getting there. On Wednesday, three “husky” men in hoodies driving a white Dodge van broke into a UPS truck Wednesday while it was parked outside a San Francisco Apple Store.
The UPS truck was delivering 313 iPhone X units to the Apple Store, wherein the robbery itself occurred between 11:15 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. PT.
The total value of the stolen merchandise was estimated to be more than $370,000. The iPhone X, which becomes available in stores Friday, starts at $999 apiece. The suspects have yet to be caught.
Everyone’s starting to use drones for mapping these days and Apple is apparently no exception.
The company plans to use drones and new indoor navigation features to improve its Maps service and catch longtime leader Google, according to sources close to the story.
The Cupertino, California-based company is assembling a team of robotics and data-collection experts that will use drones to capture and update map information faster than its existing fleet of camera-and-sensor ladened minivans, one of the sources said.
Apple seems to want to fly things around to map things like street signs, track changes to roads and monitor if areas are under construction, the source said. The data collected would be sent to Apple teams that rapidly update the Maps app to provide fresh information to users, the person added.
This could be either an Apple mapping van or a self-driving car prototype.
During a drive over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday, a modified van was spotted.
Among the collection of gadgets on the roof are the spinning Lidar laser sensors often used for self-driving cars. There are also cameras on the roof. And there’s a large antenna above the rear wheel. Yet this car has no obvious markings or insignia to identify it – not even a license plate.
It’s unclear as to which company’s van this might be, but a special web site Apple keeps tracks the movements of its mapping vans. The site lists San Francisco as one of many locations for the period of June 20 through July 3. Still, the list of locations has been virtually unchanged for the past year, so this is up in the air.
The good news is that Apple is now labeling the camera-laden SUVs that may or may not be taking a picture of your house.
Weeks after confirming the existence of the vans, the minivans now sport a simple “Apple Maps” decal along the rear quarter panels, with the address of Apple’s Maps microsite below. Both decals appear to be set in Myriad, Apple’s marketing typeface of choice for years.