(Bloomberg) – Apple Inc. is in talks with several suppliers of self-driving car sensors known as lidar, according to people familiar with the matter, an important milestone for the development of its first passenger vehicle.
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant, is in active talks with a number of potential suppliers for these laser-based sensors that enable a car’s computer to “see” its surroundings, said the people, who asked not to to be identified not nature of the discussions. The company has been working on a driverless vehicle project for several years and on its own has developed most of the software, underlying processors and artificial intelligence algorithms needed for such a sophisticated system.
As has been done with the iPhone, Apple is from outside vendors to supply critical hardware for a planned autonomous vehicle, people said. The ongoing discussions are a sign that Apple has not yet decided on a preferred provider for lidar and that it is likely to devise a variety of options, including a strong custom version of the sensors, as it moves towards the development of a engine design. This is an indication that a final product is still a few years away.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Read more: With Robotaxis still a distant dream, Lidar makes itself useful
At least half a dozen lidar companies have been published over the past few months through reverse mergers. It has raised hundreds of millions of dollars by using investors’ appetite for a bet on the future demand for high-tech cars. The laser sensor technology is used by many top players hoping to commercialize driverless vehicles, including Google parent Alphabet Inc. ‘s Waymo unit and the Cruise division of General Motors Co.
Shares of lidar manufacturers jumped on Bloomberg’s report. Luminar Technologies Inc. rose 8.9% to $ 35.75, reversing previous declines. Velodyne Lidar Inc. it climbed to 4.7% to $ 21.89. Apple shares rose 0.8% to $ 130.71 at 11:03 a.m. New York.
Benjamin Lyon, a key Apple manager who oversaw work on self-driving car hardware, left the company earlier this week for a space and satellite launch. It is unclear what impact this could have on Apple’s progress in delivering a commercially viable car.
Off the shelf
Apple has been testing its robotic taxi technology on public roads in California since 2017. The first version of its test cars, custom Lexus sports utility vehicles, used a lid stack consisting of spare parts, but it has recently become a more customized effort. .
The company, in a 2019 white paper, explained how its sensory perception technology was supposed to work. “The observation component can determine where the vehicle is located in the world and can identify and locate surrounding objects, such as other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists,” Apple said at the time. “This is done with a combination of sensors, including lidar, radar and cameras, and provides high-resolution 360-degree 3D coverage around the vehicle.”
Reuters reported in 2019 that Apple had talked to lidar manufacturers, but the autonomous vehicle project was then fully reloaded. Apple is now in talks for the next generation of lidar that will be considered as a cutting edge in four to five years – another indication of the company’s timeline, people familiar with the discussions said.
Cars aren’t the only Apple incident: the company launched an iPad Pro embedded with laser sensor technology in March, and it expanded to the iPhone 12 Pro line last fall. The technology enhances low-light photography and augmented reality applications in consumer devices; It is a more complicated thing to use it to detect driving conditions and obstacles on the road.
Five-year timeline
The iPhone maker has a team of auto parts, bodywork, powertrain and battery experts working to finally launch a car. Within the company, staff believe such a launch is at least five years away, Bloomberg News reported.
Apple’s self-driving car system has improved from a few years ago, but is still weakening the competition. Last year, Apple test cars drove more than 18,800 kilometers in California, with a human driver having to take control every 145 kilometers. This is compared to Waymo, which drove 628,839 miles and needed a human driver to take over every 30,000 miles, and Cruise, which drove 770,000 total miles with a decoupling every 28,520 miles.
Although Apple is looking for suppliers, it is also in talks about potential manufacturing and other outsourcing partnerships with various automakers. It has car manufacturing options with sister companies Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp., but the discussions were interrupted a few weeks ago. The two automakers recently said they are not in talks with Apple.
Read more: Who will build the apple car? Here are candidates to look at
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