Apple Expands California Self-Driving Test Fleet to 27 Cars

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/apple-expands-california-self-driving-test-fleet-to-27-cars

by KKKKkkkk1 • 8 years ago

64 52 8 years ago

empath75• 8 years ago

To be honest, I'd be pretty happy if apple would just let me use google maps with carplay. Can we make that happen before we figure out robot cars, apple?

atonse2• 8 years ago

Don't hold your breath. We'll all be forced to use apple maps until the end times.

I mostly like CarPlay, but the navigation is the sticking point, not because the directions or metadata are bad, but because the search is so, so, so bad.

haikuginger• 8 years ago

I've rented cars with CarPlay before; I find that the ideal way to go about it is to do a location search as I'm walking to the car and start navigation; once I plug in the phone and enter CarPlay, it picks up seamlessly onscreen.

sbr464• 8 years ago

Agree, search is basically unusable, (drive off the road, dangerous unusable!)I was surprised when recently started using on our new development Honda Civic.

sachleen• 8 years ago

I can't speak on car play, but I switched back from GMaps to Apple.

I hadn't used it since it first came out (when it sucked) but have found it's a lot better now. I especially like that it gives me the speed limit, a feature I wish Google had. I have removed Google Maps from my phone altogether now.

andy_ppp• 8 years ago

I think outside of the US Apple Maps is still super average.

plumeria• 8 years ago

Waze shows speed limits.

euyyn2• 8 years ago

I've seen speed limits in Google Maps.

ChrisBland• 8 years ago

To me its not the quality of the maps, but trying to extend their walled garden to my car

freehunter2• 8 years ago

I liked Google Maps on my iPhone right up until they started nagging me to sign in before I could get directions. The minute I saw that screen, the app was gone.

jacksmith210062• 8 years ago

Where I live Google Maps is just so much better then Apple maps that never use Apple. Plus Google is just doing so much with maps then Apple is doing.

https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ Google Maps's Moat - Justin O'Beirne

s3r3nity• 8 years ago

As much as I want to agree with you, from a product perspective, it's problematic: do you offer only one option and give Google virtually a monopoly in the navigation market, or do you offer multiple options and potentially confuse users (a la the Paradox of Choice?)

larrik• 8 years ago

What do you mean? I think it should offer you whatever navigation apps are installed on your phone that support it.

spike021• 8 years ago

Google Maps has been awful for me lately. Missing turns, not being forward enough (as in, telling me "turn left/right after the current turn). It also has given me completely wrong instructions on where to go at the end of the route to get to the destination, one time even getting me there, having me drive by it, then go a few blocks down a residential street, and say "you've arrived".. when I was clearly not at my destination.

Might try Apple Maps again.

reaperducer• 8 years ago

I've seen a similar problem with Google Maps navigation. Several times recently instead of being directed to a particular store in a strip mall, I'm directed to a residential street a block behind the strip mall and told I've arrived.

Not sure why you got downvoted. Perhaps some Google devs can't take the heat.

LukaAl• 8 years ago

I think they have a problem with the location database. For instance, the location of my home, according to GMaps, is not on my street but on the parallel one. They have probably tried to do some smart optimization and f*d up. The only issue is that there's no clear way to tell them they have made a mistake...

jacksmith210062• 8 years ago

Try the use Apple maps from time to time and always go back to Google. Plus Google keeps adding and improving while Apple maps barely changes.

https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ Google Maps's Moat - Justin O'Beirne

ritwikroy• 8 years ago

I might be wrong, but I thought the issue was the Google Maps haven't built a CarPlay UI for their iOS app? Is it actually Apple that's preventing them from doing it?

Zhenya• 8 years ago

IIRC, there is no api for third-party maps on iOS+CarPlay.

Fricken2• 8 years ago

Project Titan is such a funny thing. Back when Chauffeur, Google's self driving car project was the only game in town, automakers found it pretty easy to dismiss, but when rumours of an autonomous Apple car began to circulate, the tone amongst car people began to shift. It's what got the automakers thinking "Is this self driving car jazz for real? Omg it might be for real! The tech companies are going to eat our lunch".

It took the carmakers a while to figure out which way was up. The Germans spent $3 billion acquiring Here maps, which was a misfire. Tesla was quick to implement Mobileye's EyeQ3 chip and single camera system and then promptly burned their bridges with Mobileye by pushing the system's capabilities way beyond it's safe design constraints.

Ironically, Apple had succumb to irrational exuberance themselves in moving so aggressively on Titan. Analysts notes a $10 billion dollar bump in Apple's R&D budget during the 2 years when Titan was big. Supposedly the project was a clusterfuck. Steve Zadesky, who was put in charge wanted to make a fairly conventional car with autonomous features, but Jony I've and a group of engineers were adamant about developing a robotaxi, which offered the best opportunity to "reinvent the mobility experience". They couldn't come to terms and executive leadership of Titan was broken from the start.

So however much things were scaled back, the project definitely isn't dead. 27 test vehicles isn't small potatoes. Maybe Apple still intends to build their own vehicle, I guess we'll see.

kaiby• 8 years ago

They could've done a lot more if they were more focused, but that's not really how Apple works. They don't really research based on current technology, they like to spend time & money what could be invented. They even investigated things like "spherical wheels" [1]:

Apple even looked into reinventing the wheel. A team within Titan investigated the possibility of using spherical wheels — round like a globe — instead of the traditional, round ones, because spherical wheels could allow the car better lateral movement.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/technology/apple-self-dri...

robotresearcher2• 8 years ago

In case anyone is excited about spherical wheels, they have been looked at many times. They have the unappealing feature that the area of tread making contact with the road is minimized, giving bad grip and high pressure.

They are used occasionally in robotics on very hard, smooth, dry surfaces.

hi-im-mi-ih2• 8 years ago

You make some great points here. However, isn't 27 vehicles small potatoes? Tesla has almost 500,000 cars on the road and it also has 5 billion miles driven. That's a lot of training data. The approach to self-driving cars is largely training a model, so the data from 27 cars is actually extremely underwhelming.

dmode3• 8 years ago

Tesla doesn’t have 500K cars. I believe they have sold close to 150k cars till date. But your point remains valid. That is a lot of data compared to 27 cars

Fricken2• 8 years ago

27 cars is a start. In terms of fleet size, Waymo, Uber and Cruise each have about 200 test vehicles on the road, gathering in the ballpark of 4 terabytes of data per hour, and they currently have $150k or more of sensor+compute hardware on each vehicle, they use high definition 3D maps and are focused on validating their software to function safely within limited, geo-fenced areas; a realistic objective.

If Tesla were serious about developing an autonomous OS they would need to take a similar approach, but since all they're trying to do is summon the demon they can get away with a pentagram, a 3 horned goat, a copy of the necrinomocon and some candles.

revelation• 8 years ago

Those Tesla cars aren't collecting training data, that's preposterous. They have a mobile phone connection and some flash storage, so where is all this data going to?

It's not going over the mobile link, you would need many magnitudes the bandwidth, and it's certainly not going on the flash storage, because if you continuously stream raw camera data to flash you will kill it in a year at most.

(That is before you consider that you want a $100k sensor suite with lidar, precise wheel odometry and a GPS/INS system to get a ground truth for training anything)

gallerdude• 8 years ago

Man, I find this inside baseball kind of stuff fascinating. Where do I sign an NDA to learn the secrets of the past 10 years of Apple?

rockinghigh• 8 years ago

Car makers had self-driving research labs long before Titan leaked out.

gxs• 8 years ago

It's kind of cool seeing tech behemoths battle each other.

They aren't strapped for cash, hire brilliant people, so you really get to see the impact of different strategies and other factors at play.

I'm, at least, enjoying the show.

curiouscat321• 8 years ago

It's interesting how the incumbent auto companies are competing with Apple/Google. They have a lot of ways to go to be able to compete for talent.

Apple Expands California Self-Driving Test Fleet to 27 Cars

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