Many are probably already familiar with the fact that Apple has a self-driving car division. In recent times, it has been suggested that the company could be looking to downsize the division with layoffs, but that does not appear to be the case because Apple has since confirmed that they have acquired a self-driving car startup.
The company in question is Drive.ai and they have recently disclosed to state officials that they will be laying off 90 workers as part of them shutting their business down. It seems that this acquisition could be more of an acqui-hire situation because according to Axios, Apple has since hired dozens of both hardware and software engineers from Drive.ai.
For those unfamiliar with Drive.ai, what the company had envisioned was to turn existing cars into self-driving ones. This would be achieved by creating self-driving car kits that could be retrofitted on existing cars. It is unclear as to what Apple wants to achieve with this acquisition, or better yet, what they plan to do with self-driving car tech.
While the company has more or less acknowledged that they are exploring self-driving car tech, no one really seems to know what Apple’s endgame could be. Perhaps it could result in a kit like CarPlay head units or maybe Apple could be looking to license out its tech, or maybe we might even see a car from the company, but either way we’ll just have to wait and see.
Filed in . Read more about Self-Driving Cars. Source: sfchronicle