Rumblings of an Apple car started years ago, but now the talk is turning from fumes into something much more concrete.

For one, Apple’s self-driving test cars have been spotted on the road, including by TechRadar as seen in an exclusive video. 

What’s more, the very official California Department of Motor Vehicles has issued permits to Apple to test self-driving car tech. 

And finally, Apple itself has confirmed its interest in the self-driving space. If you need more evidence that Apple driverless car tech is in the works, we don’t know what else we can say to convince you. 

But big questions remain. Namely, what form will Apple’s self-driving car tech take? Will it be an actual Apple Car? Will it be tech we can buy and integrate into our own vehicles? Will it be hardware and software licensed to third-party car makers? Or, will it be part of a service, run by Apple to transport us around in driverless cars?

We won’t know the answers to these questions until Apple itself makes a self-driving car announcement, which could take place at WWDC 2018 on June 4, but until then, we’ve gathered up everything we know about the Apple car right here.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? Codenamed Project Titan, no one knows for sure what Apple’s self-driving car project entails
• When is it out? A couple more years, at the earliest
• How much will it cost? There’s no way to know for sure considering we don’t know what Apple is making

What we know about the Apple self-driving car so far

• Apple’s self-driving cars have been seen on public roads
• CEO Tim Cook has confirmed Apple’s interest in self-driving car AI
• Apple currently has 55 cars in its self-driving test fleet

When rumors of the Apple car first started, it was said that the tech giant was making its own electric vehicle.

This wasn’t just the stuff of fantasy; reports indicated Apple had gone on a hiring spree, including plucking top talent from the automotive industry, to build out a team that would create the iCar. 

But, as the years went on and no Apple Car appeared, whispers began to circulate that Apple may have bitten off more than it could chew when it came to producing a car, steering wheel to wheels, so to speak. 

Then, in April 2017, it was discovered that the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) had issued an Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit to Apple, allowing it to conduct self-driving car tests in the state.

At around the same time, eagle-eyed observers began spotting mystery SUVs decked out in self-driving car gear that appeared to belong to Apple. 

The first sighting came less than two weeks after the DMV permit discovery, when a white Lexus with a large rig housing what appeared to be autonomous car tech was seen leaving an Apple facility.

Here’s the car that #Apple’s using to test its autonomous car technology. Story with @mhbergen. https://t.co/jHLnJDRjoS pic.twitter.com/zTezUmcZwCApril 27, 2017

Six months later, in October 2017, another white Lexus with lots of self-driving gear was spotted, and the person who filmed it happens to have co-founded an autonomous vehicle startup, so he knew a thing or two about self-driving cars. 

This car had a noticeably updated rig compared to the earlier sighting. According to MacCallister Higgins, the person who saw the vehicle, the large rooftop hardware probably contained “the majority of the compute stack,” which makes it different from most self-driving cars that would usually house this hardware within their trunks. 

The self-driving hardware, then, can be placed onto vehicles with relative ease, allowing for testing without much modification to cars. This could also mean that Apple’s self-driving tech could one day be sold as an add-on to consumers or third-party manufacturers, if Apple decides to make its tech publicly available. 

Going to need more than 140 characters to go over 🍎’s Project Titan. I call it “The Thing” pic.twitter.com/sLDJd7iYSaOctober 17, 2017

By now Apple’s secretive car project also had a codename: Project Titan. 

But it wasn’t just sightings and anonymous reports giving us details about Apple’s self-driving car plans. We soon heard word from Apple’s head honcho himself. 

In June 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke out publicly about Project Titan, to many people’s surprise. 

Okay, Cook didn’t name Project Titan specifically, but he did confirm Apple’s interest in the self-driving car space. 

Specifically, Cook said Apple is focusing on “autonomous systems,” suggesting the company is interested in building the AI brains that power driverless cars rather than producing the mechanical components of a vehicle on its own.

“We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects […] It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on,” Cook said in the interview with Bloomberg Television.

So, it would seem that Apple’s driverless car plans revolve around creating the software that powers self-driving cars, rather than creating an actual car or even hardware for a driverless vehicle.

This makes sense. Apple is not a car manufacturer (in case you hadn’t noticed), and its best chance at excelling in the space would seem to stem from developing cutting-edge autonomous systems that serve as the brains of a vehicle, built by someone else. 

Apple isn’t staying confined to the lab when it comes to testing self-driving car tech, however. It was recently confirmed by the California DMV that Apple has an autonomous testing permit that covers 55 self-driving cars and 83 drivers in the state. This is a huge leap from the three cars it started out with in 2017. 

This figure gives Apple the second most self-driving cars in California behind GM Cruise and ahead of Google’s Waymo. Waymo counts 51 self-driving cars under its permit in the Golden State, while GM Cruise has the most with 104.

In May 2018, TechRadar filmed exclusive video of an Apple self-driving car on the road in and around Apple office buildings in Sunnyvale, California. 

This new sighting revealed some notable changes from the last time the vehicle was caught on camera, suggesting Apple’s self-driving car tech has possibly undergone another update.

Watch our video of the Apple self-driving car below

The biggest change between this car and those in previous Apple car sightings is that the lidar sensors and cameras are much more prominent. 

Previous sightings have shown the puck-shaped lidar and cameras encased in white coverings, but this vehicle doesn’t have anything obscuring these components. 

The lidar pucks are also more vertically oriented; previous sightings showed the lidar positioned at an angle. Additionally, this vehicle has three lidar total on the rear of the roof rig, down from the six seen previously.

It could be that Apple simply did away with lidar and camera casings and made some configuration adjustments in this model while keeping the actual technology the same. Apple’s self-driving car plans are not so mysterious any more, so it could be the company is lifting the veil on its tech, just a little.

Other Apple car developments

• Apple and VW reportedly team up on autonomous employee shuttles
• Apple patent points to VR entertainment for self-driving cars

As we’ve mentioned, Apple’s car project has hit some bumps along the way, but that hasn’t stopped the tech giant from forging ahead with its self-driving car plans. And it’s not just mystery cars and veiled hints that Apple has going for it.

A report from May 2018 by the New York Times points to Apple partnering with Volkswagen to develop self-driving shuttle buses that would cart Apple employees between its Silicon Valley campuses. 

According to sources for the NYT, the project is the primary focus of the Apple car team, though it, too, has fallen behind schedule. 

Apple apparently wanted to partner with the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and even McClaren for a large-scale partnership, but these never came to fruition because Apple wanted the internal car design schematics and access to driving data from partners.

So, in came VW, fresh off its emissions-cheating scandal. Sources said VW donated T6 Transporter vans and allowed Apple access to its data. The two companies have allegedly been working on a joint electric, self-driving T6 van prototype in Turin, Italy. 

Sources claim the model uses the frame, chassis and wheels of the standard VW design, but say that Apple has swapped out the dashboard, seats and electric car battery, and added the lidar sensor rig we’ve already seen. 

The van would be self-driving, not driverless, and require a two-person team – a safety driver and monitoring operator – at all times. 

Though the project is reportedly behind schedule, having already missed its 2018 deadline, this is certainly a realistic project for Apple to undertake to get its self-driving tech on the road. 

Not only is it working with an established car maker, but creating a self-driving shuttle service for its employees would be an invaluable case study.

Yet another area Apple could be working on is entertainment for when you are inside a self-driving car. 

An Apple patent filing, uncovered in March 2018, demonstrates how VR headsets could be worn by passengers in a self-driving car, rendering windows with a view of the outside world – or indeed any world that the occupants of the car wanted to go through. Fancy a tour through Jurassic Park? Done.

You could even use the VR experiences to hold a virtual meeting in a virtual office space, according to the patent. 

The VR goggles could help reduce motion sickness, Apple says, and make self-driving cars smaller and safer. If no windows are needed, car designs could potentially be more compact and better able to withstand collisions.

Of course, this is just a patent, and not confirmation that anything official is in the works. However, it does show that Apple is thinking about self-driving cars, specifically what we’ll do when we’re just sitting around inside them. 

Maybe the Apple VR headset will be ready by the time Apple’s self-driving cars are on the road.

Who are Apple’s biggest self-driving rivals?

• Google’s Waymo is dominating the self-driving field
• Uber self-driving car tests stall
• Nearly every major car maker is doing self-driving

Apple is far from alone in the self-driving car space. Its rivals are numerous, and most are way ahead of it when it comes to driverless car development. 

The biggest rival is of course Waymo, which was once Google’s self-driving car project and is now its own company under Alphabet. Waymo is dominating the self-driving car space in nearly every way, from number of cars on the road to disengagements. 

It recently announced that it’s adding 62,000 more Chrysler minivans to its self-driving fleet. That’s in addition to the 20,000 all-electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs slated to join Waymo’s ranks in the coming years. 

Waymo’s aim is to launch a self-driving ride-hailing service in Phoenix this year. As it’s leading the pack when it comes to disengagements (when a human has to take over for the self-driving AI), number of cars and miles driven (6 million autonomous miles and counting), there’s a good chance residents of Phoenix will be hitching a ride in a Waymo car before the year is up.

Uber self-driving cars had been hot on Waymo’s heals for a while, but a fatal accident in March 2018 derailed the ride-sharing service’s tests. 

Following the fatal crash, when an Uber self-driving car in autonomous mode struck and killed a pedestrian, Uber suspended all of its self-driving car tests nationwide. 

It then announced in May 2018 that it was ending its self-driving car program in Arizona, and there’s still no word yet on when tests will resume elsewhere. 

The preliminary report by the US National Transportation Safety Board into the accident revealed that while the car in the accident had an emergency braking feature, this was disabled because the car was in “computer mode.” Uber says it does this to prevent erratic driving behavior. 

The fallout from the Uber crash won’t just be felt by the ride-hailing company. Self-driving car companies everywhere will be under much closer scrutiny, and many will need to reexamine their own safety procedures to identify possible holes. 

What this means for Apple is that it, too, will be under the watchful public eye if and when it launches its self-driving car tech. It will need to make sure its systems are as safe as can be. 

But Waymo and Uber aren’t the only ones doing self-driving cars. In fact, it’s not just tech companies in the traditional sense that are developing driverless systems, but nearly every major car maker is working on some form of autonomous driving experience for their vehicles. 

Tesla has its Autopilot feature, and is perhaps Apple’s biggest rival when it comes to aesthetics, should Apple ever decide to create or co-design a self-driving car of its own. 

VW, meanwhile, is testing autonomous parking at the Hamburg Airport with plans to launch the feature in its commercial cars by 2020. 

Jaguar, BMW, Nissan, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, GM and Hyundai are just some of the big names that are tinkering with self-driving tech for their cars as well. 

It’s only a matter of time before self-driving features becomes standard in most consumer vehicles. Apple may be working on self-driving tech, but it’s entering a crowded playing field. The question is, will its tech do anything different?

Read on for our earlier coverage of the Apple Car

http://www.techradar.com/news/car-tech/satnav/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-apple-car-1292674

Driverless cars – are these the future of transportation, or a passing tech fad? The reality is that driverless cars are closer to becoming an everyday thing than you might think. 

Almost daily, there’s a new development in the driverless car space, and nearly every major car manufacturer, ride-sharing service and tech company from Apple to Google has bought into the driverless car industry. 

And, if you take all the driverless car chatter at face value, we’re only a couple years away from a utopian society where cars will navigate and park by themselves, and accidents become a rarity. 

In fact, Google wants to have a self-driving ride-hailing service on the road by the end of this year. 

Apple self-driving cars, meanwhile, are spotted regularly, driving down the road with rigs housing everything that’s needed to run a self-driving experience. There’s a chance we could hear about Apple’s driverless car plans at WWDC 2018 on June 4.

[Update: TechRadar captured Apple’s self-driving car in an exclusive new video, seen below. 

The car, spotted in May 2018 driving in and around Apple offices in Sunnyvale, California, is sporting a different rig than we’ve seen on previous Apple cars. 

The lidar and cameras on this car are exposed, in contrast to previous sightings of Apple’s self-driving cars. The layout of the components is also slightly different; the lidar is vertically oriented as opposed to positioned at an angle, as has been the case in older sightings. There are also less lidar on the back of the rig than before.]

Watch our video of the Apple self-driving car below

• Here’s everything you need to know about the Apple Car

While the driverless car industry continues to grow, one unfortunate turn in the story of self-driving cars is a number of recent fatal accidents, incidents that show the technology that cars use to spot pedestrians and avoid collisions still has a long way to go.

With more companies applying for licenses to test driverless cars on public roads, and more public scrutiny on the tech than ever before, we thought it best to break down how companies like Apple, Google, Uber, Tesla and others train artificial intelligence to see the road—and which AIs might have a blind spot. 

We’ve gathered the latest details on which countries allow public driverless car testing, which companies are developing the smartest AI models, and what the future of the driverless car industry could bring in the next few years. 

What is a driverless car?

Simply put, a truly driverless car must be capable of navigating to a destination, avoiding obstacles, and parking without any human intervention.

To accomplish this, a driverless car must have an artificial intelligence system that senses its surroundings, processes the visual data to determine how to avoid collisions, operates car machinery like the steering and brake, and uses GPS to track the car’s current location and destination. 

Without an AI, cars cannot be truly driverless. 

Companies like Google’s Waymo put have put AI inside virtual cars and have the vehicles ‘drive’ billions of virtual miles, throwing every perceivable obstacle and situation at the cars to see how they respond. 

The AI learns what actions lead to crashes, and slowly learns how it should drive on real roads.

To perceive visual surroundings, most self-driving cars have some combination of three visual systems: video cameras, radar and lidar. 

The AI synthesizes the data from these different systems to fully map out its surroundings and watch out for unexpected obstacles. 

Most driverless cars require all three: AIs require visual cameras and deep learning software to interpret objects like street lights and stop signs, and while radar catches most obstacles instantly, it’s not as good as spotting smaller obstacles as lidar. 

Still, some vehicles with autonomous capabilities like Tesla’s Model 3 don’t use lidar; Elon Musk famously called lidar an overly-expensive “crutch”, and that cameras and radar should suffice. 

One thing to consider: the Model 3, along with pretty much every other “self-driving car” currently out there, aren’t truly “driverless”. 

Most people tend to use terms like “driverless”, “autonomous” and “self-driving” as interchangeable. 

But, there are significant differences in the tech required for an “autonomous” AI that can only handle highways and a truly “driverless” or “self-driving” car that doesn’t even need a steering wheel or human operator to park or navigate. 

Some car companies tend to fog the issue by claiming cruise control tech for driving straight and avoiding obstacles is “self-driving”. 

Mercedes-Benz actually had to pull ads that claimed its 2017 E-Class was a “vehicle that could drive itself.” 

But, until AI tech is sophisticated enough to drive somewhere like a school crossing without any danger to pedestrians, most, though not all, governments won’t allow cars to drive without a human seated behind the wheel.

Why should this matter to you? Because some drivers are feeling safe enough to leave the driver’s seat while their car is in motion, putting pedestrians (and themselves) at risk. It’s vitally important that the autonomous vs driverless distinction become more clear to the public. 

So, while we’re covering autonomous cars in this piece, don’t mistake them for being driverless; most of them have at least a few years before their AIs can properly navigate the world without a human crutch. 

Why driverless cars?

For commuters, the answer is obvious: a chance to catch some extra shut-eye, get work done or watch Netflix instead of spending hours navigating through traffic. 

But why have companies invested an estimated $80 billion and years of work into this technology?

For starters, it could simply be a case of jumping on the bandwagon. Pretty much every major car company has developed or implemented some kind of autopilot technology into their cars. Not having that tech available could make a brand look out of date.

But, at least some companies have bold business plans for self-driving tech beyond just fitting in with everyone else.

Most car brands are very concerned with their crash safety ratings. If driverless car tech will truly reduce the rate of accidents, car companies will want to push this tech forward. AI safety ratings could even become a future metric for prospective car buyers to look at.

Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, meanwhile, plan to make their taxis driverless, which would mean not having to pay human drivers. 

In January, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he wanted to have self-driving taxis picking up passengers by 2019, and that 20% or more of Uber’s fleet could be driverless. 

However, Uber’s self-driving car ambitions have hit a major roadblock, which we’ll detail further on Pages 2 and 3.

Other companies like Ford hope to incorporate their cars into city-wide networks that will track traffic conditions and available parking, so the company’s self-driving cars will reach destinations faster than other cars. 

Then, of course, Ford will sell its self-driving cars as a service to delivery or ride-sharing companies; Ford has already partnered with Domino’s and Postmates to deliver packages and pizza in a car that’s not actually self-driving, but pretends to be in order to gauge the public’s reaction.

Most of these companies don’t want consumers actually buying their self-driving cars. 

But, at least one car industry expert claimed that car companies want their driverless tech to be a “regularly recurring subscription model”, where customers, even used-car buyers, have to keep paying for the right not to drive. 

Whatever the reasons, these companies have invested too much money in driverless car AIs to stop now, despite the fact that many countries haven’t fully approved the use of self-driving cars yet. 

Businesses clearly seem to think it’s only a matter of time before driverless cars are on the road.

Where are driverless cars?

While self-driving car companies have convinced many state and national governments to let them test their AIs on public roads, nearly all governments strictly limit the cars from driving outside of testing tracks, with a few notable exceptions.

In the United States, 33 states have enacted legislation to allow for limited self-driving tests, but only a few states and cities let AIs be in control on public roads—and even then almost always with strict human oversight at all times. 

The exception to this rule is Phoenix, Arizona, where Waymo has been testing self-driving cars without safety drivers on the city’s streets. 

Uber was also testing self-driving cars in Arizona until a high-profile fatal accident led to the state’s governor to suspend Uber’s testing privileges indefinitely. 

Uber eventually announced the closure of its self-driving car program in Arizona on May 23. Its program remains suspended elsewhere in the country.

California is another hot spot for self-driving cars, both because Silicon Valley hosts so many tech companies and because California no longer requires a human behind the wheel if companies can prove their AI is up to the task. 

Cities in the US where you’re most likely to spot driverless cars include Mountain View and San Francisco, California; Phoenix, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Miami, Austin, Detroit and New York City.

Europe, home to several huge car manufacturers, has many receptive countries that allow for limited driverless testing. 

Germany recently approved Volkswagen to begin testing self-parking cars at the Hamburg airport. 

For its part, Volvo is testing driverless cars and buses in Stockholm, Sweden. In the Netherlands, Amber Mobility plans to launch a Zipcar-like service of electric driverless cars in several Dutch cities in mid-2018. 

In the United Kingdom, however, the government recently initiated the UK Autodrive initiative to push autonomous innovation, but, at the same time, the government is also conducting a three-year review of self-driving technology’s safety implications, and hasn’t approved testing on public roads yet. 

Australia, by contrast, has begun some public testing, but some reports say the country is lagging behind other countries in scale. 

In Asia, countries like China, Japan and Singapore have enabled companies to begin testing self-driving taxis, but always with a human behind the wheel. Uber rival Didi Chuxing is one company leading China’s push for driverless tech. 

As for autonomous tech found in cars like Tesla? You can find that in pretty much every nation, although most road laws dictate that drivers keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times. 

http://www.techradar.com/news/driverless-cars-explained

There’s no easy way to figure out the best unlimited plan in the US (believe us, we just did it). Mobile carriers offer all sorts of different plans, combining talk, text, and data, and then make everything complicated with varying features and limitations. We’re here to simplify the whole process by showing you which mobiles carriers offer the best value data plans with unlimited talking and texting.

We looked at the offerings of dozens of the top carriers in the US to see if they had proper unlimited plans, and to get all the details we could about them. To narrow down the results, we’ve cut out any carriers with data plans that have a hard cap (i.e., carriers that will slow your data speeds significantly for the rest of your plan period after you’ve used a set amount of data). This means only carriers that rely on throttling to address network congestion have made it through. Everything else fails to fit into the same league of “unlimited.”

We’ve also focused simply on the base tier of unlimited plans for individual customers: no family plans making it seem like a carrier has a good deal, when in fact you need three more people to sign up with you; just the lowest cost plan that offers unlimited talk, text, and data. This means deals on phones and the value of extra perks like free Netflix or HBO aren’t factored into the rankings. 

Now that we’ve cleared up how we picked, let’s get straight to the rankings.

Best value unlimited plans:

Best deal: MetroPCS unlimited plan for $50 (runs on T-Mobile network)

MetroPCS offers the best value unlimited plan on the market right now. For mobile phone users that want to pay as little as possible while getting as much data as possible, MetroPCS is the right carrier. 

MetroPCS runs on T-Mobile’s powerful network (though sometimes spotty in rural areas, in our experience). And it’s unlimited plan costs $50 with all taxes and fees included in that price. Users can stream use as much data as they want, and call and text to their hearts’ content. Some added perks are music streaming that doesn’t count against your data, Wi-Fi calling, and Scam ID. 

There are some limitations to the plan. Users who exceed 35GB of data use in a month can see their speeds throttled during times of network congestion. This MetroPCS plan also doesn’t allow customers to use their phones as Wi-Fi Hotspots. Still, the plan remains highly competitive, with a soft data cap much higher than a lot of its similarly priced and even more expensive competitors.

Alternative pick: Boost Mobile Unlimited Gigs plan for $50 (runs on Sprint network)

Boost Mobile’s Unlimited Gigs plan comes strikingly close to the offer from MetroPCS. Some customers will actually get more out of Boost Mobile’s plan if they regularly need to get data to other devices, or if they find the Sprint wireless network more reliable.

For $50 (all taxes and fees included in that price), Boost Mobile customers get unlimited talk, text, and data. Boost Mobile has a soft cap for data on this plan at 23GB, and it will throttle customers who use more than that when the network is congested. It also limits video streaming quality to 480p+. 

Similar to our top pick, Boost Mobile allows unlimited music streaming from its popular streaming partners, like Spotify and Pandora, with none of that data counting toward users’ data caps. Also, though Boost Mobile has a tighter limit on high-speed data, it does allow for up to 8GB of Wi-Fi Hotspot usage each period.

Other contenders in this category:

• Walmart Family Mobile (very close to MetroPCS, but not better) 
• Teltik (best option for business users) 
• Virgin Mobile (high value for iPhone buyers) 
• Cricket Wireless
• Straight Talk
• Page Plus Cellular

Top of the Big 4:

Best offer: T-Mobile ONE plan for $70

At first glance, the T-Mobile ONE plan doesn’t look like it’s the best deal, but we factored everything in, and it added up. One big point in T-Mobile’s favor is that the $70 monthly fee is exact: all taxes and fees are already included. AT&T and Sprint are cheaper at first, but their plans have some more limits that keep us from recommending them over T-Mobile.

T-Mobile has the highest soft data cap of all four major carriers. It won’t begin deprioritizing T-Mobile ONE customer data speeds until after they’ve used 50GB. That means customers who truly plan to get their money’s worth of unlimited data will get more mileage from T-Mobile. One constraint is that video streaming is limited to DVD quality.

There are extra perks as well. Tethering is allowed at up to 3G speeds. Customers can use their phone while traveling in Canada and Mexico with unlimited talk and text and 5GB of 4G LTE data, along with some usability in more than 140 other countries. Plus, T-Mobile throws in a free Netflix subscription that didn’t even factor into our consideration.

Alternative pick: Sprint Unlimited Freedom plan for $60

Of the big four carriers, Sprint offers the lowest base price for its unlimited plan. The Unlimited Freedom plan is just $60, though taxes and fees go on top of that. The big reason that Sprint fell short of T-Mobile in our ranking is that its Unlimited Freedom plan has a much lower soft cap of 23GB compared to T-Mobile’s 50GB cap.

Where Sprint does make up some for its smaller data cap though is the way customers can use their data. Sprint allows streaming in Full HD (1080p), which is a big step up from the DVD quality that T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T limit streaming to. Sprint also allows 10GB of Wi-Fi Hotspot usage (though exceeding 10GB will auto-buy another 10GB for $10). Of course, being able to use all the data means it will be easier to hit the 23GB soft cap and risk data deprioritization. 

The extra perks from Sprint’s Unlimited Freedom plan include global roaming and a free subscription to Hulu. 

How the others fell short:
AT&T and Verizon both had pricey unlimited plans that were not competitive with how they handled data deprioritization. Both networks throttle users on their base plans during times of congestion irrespective of how much data those users have used in a plan period.

http://www.techradar.com/news/best-unlimited-mobile-plans-in-usa