Apple Car Accelerates Testing, Navigates New Autonomous Roadmap

Apple tested its self-driving car technology more than ever last year, logging almost 450,000 miles of autonomous driving in California between December 2022 and November 2023, according to DMV data. However, that is reportedly tiny compared to the millions of miles of testing logged by other corporations.

According to Wired, it is about four times what Apple did the previous year, indicating that genuine work is being done on the long-rumored automobile project despite Apple's lower expectations.

Apple Tested Self-Driving Car Technology More Than Ever Last Year

Apple's Secretive Vehicle project has little to show for its six years of labor, at least publicly, as per The Verge. However, statistics filed by the company to a California agency show that Apple embarked on an autonomous testing spree last year, nearly quadrupling the number of miles tested on public roads compared to 2022 and exceeding 2021's total by more than 30.

The data spans December 2022 to November 2023. The majority of the testing miles were accumulated during the second half of the reporting period, peaking at 83,900 in August.

Apple has been granted permission to test autonomous vehicle technology on California's public roads, but only with a safety driver behind the wheel—a first step that will allow autonomous vehicle businesses to collect more data on streets and establish how their software handles itself in traffic.

A few other businesses, including Alphabet's Waymo and Amazon's Zoox, have received state approval to test without safety drivers. California allows only two businesses to deploy commercial self-driving technology: Waymo and Nuro, an autonomous delivery firm.

Apple's testing totals are significantly lower than those of more advanced autonomous vehicle developers, though the state's reporting restrictions make them tough to compare directly. Waymo drove 3.7 million testing miles in California with a safety driver and 1.2 million without someone behind the wheel.

According to other federal documents, the business drove an additional 1.6 million miles with passengers in the automobile. (Waymo also operates a driverless service in Phoenix and is testing in Austin, Texas; however, those operations are not included in this data.)

Apple's Autonomous Vehicle Ambitions in the Wake of Industry Shifts

Even Cruise, General Motors' controversial autonomous vehicle subsidiary, which had its California deployment permit terminated in October and national testing halted shortly thereafter, drove about 2.65 million testing miles in the state in 2023, nearly 2.2 million more than Apple.

The data released by the California government today is even more interesting in light of a Bloomberg article from last month, which stated that Apple had scaled back its plans to construct a self-driving electric vehicle.

Whereas the corporation formerly aspired to create a car that could drive itself anywhere, at any time, Bloomberg claimed that Apple now plans to develop automated driving-assistance capabilities similar to those given by manufacturers such as Tesla, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz. Though these features include automatic aspects, drivers must always pay attention to the road. Bloomberg claimed that the debut date for the scaled-down Apple EV has been pushed back from 2026 to 2028.

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