Tech giant joins Google and Uber in the robot car race

folarin okunola

August 18, 2015 4:11 PM

Documents show the rumoured Apple car project appears to have progressed farther along than many suspected.

Apple is the most valuable tech company in the world

Rumors that Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley has been going around for quite some time and now there is evidence that it is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it. Documents show the rumoured Apple car project appears to have progressed farther along than many suspected.

The Guardian reports that in May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being used as a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

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Information obtained by the Guardian under a public records act request reveals that Apple engineer Frank Fearon wrote: “We would ... like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it].”

Apple has refused to comment on the findings.

GoMentum Station is on the old Concord naval weapons station, a second world war-era facility with 20 miles of paved highways and city streets that’s now disused. The base is closed to the public and is now guarded by the military. Mercedes-Benz and Honda have reportedly carried out experiments with self-driving cars behind its barbed-wire fences already.

This level of security is bound to appeal to Apple, which has hundreds of engineers secretly working on automotive technologies in an anonymous office building in Sunnyvale, four miles from its main campus in Cupertino. Details of what this team is working on are still unknown but it seems that Apple has a self-driving car almost ready for the road.

Apple has been said to be working on a self-driving electric car, codenamed Project Titan, but this is the first time its existence has actually been documented.

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The move comes as Google, Uber and other tech companies are pouring cash and heavy investments into autonomous cars.

folarin okunola