Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Photographer: Sam Hall / Bloomberg
Photographer: Sam Hall / Bloomberg
Apple Inc. will take at least half a decade to bring an autonomous, electric vehicle to market, as development work is still in its infancy, say people with knowledge of the efforts.
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has a small team of hardware engineers who develop powertrain systems, vehicle interiors and exterior body designs with the ultimate goal of shipping a vehicle. That is a more ambitious goal than in previous years, when the project was mainly aimed at creating an underlying self-driving system. The company also has more ex-executives from Tesla Inc. added to the project.
Still, some Apple engineers on the project believe the company could release a product within five to seven years if Apple goes ahead with its plans. The car is nowhere near the production stage, the people said, although they warned the timelines could change. They asked not to be identified when discussing sensitive internal work. The majority of the team currently works at home or in the office for a limited amount of time, slowing down the company’s ability to develop a full vehicle. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
An Apple car would rival Tesla electric vehicles and offerings from companies such as upstart Lucid Motors and established manufacturers such as Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz and General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet. A key differentiator is Apple’s ability to integrate its self-driving system, an expensive initiative that has spurred the company to develop its own software, sensor hardware and chip technologies. The goal is to have a user enter their destination and drive there with little or no other involvement, according to the people familiar with the project.
An Apple test car for the self-driving system in 2017
Bloomberg
Apple doesn’t manufacture its own products and will likely take the same approach with a vehicle. However, it is unclear which company would assemble the car. In its first attempt about five years ago, Apple worked with engineers from Magna International Inc., a major contract manufacturer in the automotive industry. Reuters recently reported that Apple plans to start producing a car as early as 2024.
Apple has continued to explore building its self-driving car system for a third-party auto partner rather than its own, people said, and it could eventually again abandon its own auto efforts in favor of this approach.
The company first started building an electric car in 2014, hiring hundreds of hardware engineers for the effort, before quickly scaling back around 2016 to focus on the self-driving car system. From 2016 to 2019, Apple cut hundreds of employees from the team. However, it kept some hardware engineers with expertise in auto parts who either stayed with the auto project or worked on other initiatives.
As a sign that it has now restarted vehicle development, Apple has in recent months transferred a director known for his work on vehicle interiors and exteriors to its automotive team. In 2019 Apple hired Steve MacManus, the former vice president of Tesla Engineering, but he initially worked on projects unrelated to the car. Now MacManus leads a development group with several employees working on automotive interiors, fabrics, automotive testing and vehicle manufacturing, say people with expertise. He reports to Doug Field, a former Tesla vehicle engineer who daily leads the Apple car project.
Apple also recently hired Jonathan Sive, a vehicle engineer from BMW AG, Tesla and Waymo from Alphabet Inc., as the senior manager for the automotive project. In 2019, Apple hired Michael Schwekutsch, the former Tesla vice president responsible for powertrain systems, adding to a growing list of former Tesla employees who worked on the vehicle.
In late 2020, Apple also hired another former Tesla vice president, Stuart Bowers, according to a person familiar with the move. He led Tesla’s self-driving technology team until mid-2019 and was one executive-in-residence at venture capital firm Greylock Partners until July, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Apple’s car team is packed with dozens of other ex-Tesla hardware and self-driving car engineers. In total, Apple has hundreds of engineers working on the project, most of whom are developing the self-driving car system instead of the full-fledged vehicle.
John Giannandrea
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Late last year, Apple moved the project led by John Giannandrea, head of artificial intelligence, suggesting that most of the development work on the underlying autonomous software remains.
Read more: Apple is shifting leadership from the self-driving car unit to AI Chief
The smaller hardware team deals with vehicle dynamics, drivetrain, safety mechanics and battery technology. It also tries to reimagine a car’s interior for a future where people drive passively instead of steering.
In recent months, Apple has posted job openings indicating that this vehicle work is on the rise. The company is looking for a chief engineer to integrate “audio drivers, tuners, speakers, microphones, wired buses, power supplies, wireless communications and antennas” into standalone systems.
Another vacancy calls for an engineer with experience in LED lighting to deliver “a fully validated system ready for volume production,” suggesting that the company’s autonomous work will be designed to eventually be mass-produced. The company has also published lists for engineers to work on “high voltage” battery systems, an important part of electric cars.
Apple’s chip unit, led by Johny Srouji, is also playing a role in the development of the car, the people said. Since 2018, Srouji’s team has been developing a custom Arm-based chip with a strong focus on machine learning processing to power the underlying self-driving car system.
The company has been testing autonomous technology on public roads since 2017. In 2019, the company’s test vehicles drove an average of about 190 kilometers before a human safety driver had to take over. That was more than 1 mile per withdrawal in 2018, according to data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. According to the California DMV, the company has 66 cars in its fleet. That is up from 55 vehicles allowed as of mid-2018.