It is still very much unclear as to what Apple wants to do with self-driving cars. However whatever it is that the company has planned, it only seems to be expanding because according to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, it appears that Apple’s self-driving fleet now boasts of 70 vehicles along with 139 drivers that are permitted to test these vehicles.
It has been pointed out that this is an increase from a report back in July that revealed that Apple had only 66 vehicles and 111 drivers. As it has been pointed out, Apple’s permit for testing self-driving cars is limited to just that, where they will still be required to have an actual human driver behind the wheel to takeover in case anything goes wrong.
This is versus other companies who have driverless car permits that allows the testing of fully autonomous vehicles on the road. Like we said, it’s really anyone’s guess as to what Apple plans to do with this technology. It has been speculated in the past that Apple might want to build their own cars.
This would represent a massive undertaking and as rich as Apple is, manufacturing cars is a completely different process than building computers and phones. Others have suggested that Apple is exploring the technology which they could then potentially use to power other self-driving cars. Either way whatever their reasons are, it is certainly growing.
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