Apple Sees A Market

Self-Drive Cars - Apple

Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley, and is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it, the Guardian has learned. Documents show the oft-rumoured Apple car project appears to be further along than many suspected.

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 turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

In correspondence obtained by the Guardian under a public records act request, 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 declined to comment.

GoMentum Station is on the old Concord naval weapons station, a disused second world war-era facility with 20 miles of paved highways and city streets. The base is closed to the public and guarded by the military, making it, officials claim, “the largest secure test facility in the world” for the “testing validation and commercialization of connected vehicle (CV) applications and autonomous vehicles (AV) technologies to define the next generation of transportation network infrastructure.” Mercedes-Benz and Honda have already carried out experiments with self-driving cars behind its barbed-wire fences.

This security is bound to appeal to Apple, which has hundreds of engineers quietly working on automotive technologies in an anonymous office building in Sunnyvale, four miles from its main campus in Cupertino. Details of the project are still unknown but it seems that Apple has a self-driving car almost ready for the road. In late May, Jack Hall, program manager for autonomous vehicles at GoMentum Station, wrote to Fearon to postpone a tour of the facility but noted: “We would still like to meet in order to keep everything moving and to meet your testing schedule.”

Apple has been rumoured to be working on a self-driving electric car, codenamed Project Titan, but this is the first time its existence has been documented. In May, Apple senior vice-president Jeff Williams called the car “the ultimate mobile device” and said that Apple was “exploring a lot of different markets ... [in which] we think we can make a huge amount of difference”.

The move comes as Google, Uber and other tech companies are pouring cash into robot cars. Apple chief executive Tim Cook has held a series of meetings with car executives in recent months and the company has poached automotive experts from established players, including the head of Mercedes Benz’s Silicon Valley research arm.

Cook has met with Fiat-Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne and may have toured BMW’s i3 electric car assembly line in Germany last year. The company has also been recruiting automotive experts from Silicon Valley and beyond, hiring engineers from Tesla Motors and Mercedes-Benz, as well as power experts from electric car battery maker A123 Systems. Fearon previously worked on an innovative electric motorbike at Silicon Valley start-up Lit Motors, and helped to build an autonomous robotic paraglider while studying at Georgia Institute of Technology.

When Fearon approached GoMentum Station, he wrote: “We are hoping to see a presentation on the ... testing grounds with a layout, photos, and a description of how the various areas of the grounds could be used.” GoMentum Station’s empty roads feature everything from highway overpasses and railway crossings to tunnels and cattle grids. These would enable Apple to test vehicles in a variety of realistic everyday situations but without exposing it to scrutiny.

Google, Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and several other carmakers have been issued permits by the California department of motor vehicles to test self-driving cars on the state’s public roads. But that process requires disclosing technical and commercial details, something that the notoriously secretive Apple might not want.

“We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Apple,” says Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, owner of GoMentum Station. “We can’t tell you anything other than they’ve come in and they’re interested.”

Apple’s obsession with secrecy even extends internally. While one of the engineers corresponding with GoMentum Station admits to belonging to Apple’s Special Projects group, Fearon signs his emails with a cryptic question mark icon. However, documents seen by the Guardian reveal that Apple’s automotive team is housed in a low-profile building several miles from the company’s glamorous new Cupertino campus, which is currently under construction.

The Sunnyvale building was leased in 2014, and was subsequently modified by Apple to include several lab and workshop spaces, as well as beefed-up security and access card readers, city permits show. “GoMentum Station is 40 miles north of Silicon Valley,” says Iwasaki. “And there’s not a lot of vacant space in the Valley if you want to do testing in a secure location. We’re close enough that companies can bring their vehicles north, store them in the Concord area and bring their software and hardware engineers up.”

Google and other car makers have visited GoMentum Station with a view to trialling driverless cars there, although so far only Honda has signed a $250,000 memorandum of understanding with the facility to begin testing. The Japanese automaker plans to use self-driving versions of its RLX saloon to accelerate the development of automated and connected vehicle technologies far from prying eyes.

However, when engineers from Tesla Motors tried to tour GoMentum Station in April, armed soldiers at the base refused entry to foreign-born workers and a manager who would not divulge his social security number. “At this point, I’ll retract our interest in this test site until the process is worked out,” he huffed in an email to GoMentum Station’s Jack Hall.

Such high security might not suit all carmakers, but Apple should feel right at home.

How

Automobile production might seem a stretch for a company more accustomed to making handheld electronic gadgets and software.

While Apple has yet to make any official announcement, or even to comment on the speculation, mounting evidence suggests the company is at least exploring the development of automotive technology.

But how would an Apple car be manufactured? Industry experts say the company could produce vehicles in much the same way that it makes iPhones and watches: by outsourcing the production of components and contracting with existing manufacturers. What’s more, as cars become more electrified and computerized, Apple’s existing expertise in software, user interfaces, and batteries may become an increasingly valuable asset.

Apple has hired robotics engineers with expertise in the sensing and control capabilities needed for self-driving vehicles. One industry source recently told MIT Technology Review he met with engineers at an Apple-owned subsidiary to discuss automated driving technology. And according to sources quoted recently in the Wall Street Journal,the Apple car could become a commercialized product by 2019. Apple and some automotive suppliers contacted declined to comment for this article.

“It seems hugely aggressive, but not necessarily impossible,” says David Keith, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management who studies the way new technologies proliferate through the automotive industry.

Keith adds that the car industry has seen a glut of production capacity, meaning Apple could quite easily take over an existing factory somewhere. And he suggests that producing an electric vehicle would be simpler because batteries and electric motors are already fairly commoditized. “If you aren’t building an engine, it is really putting all the parts together and painting it,” he says.

Others agree that Apple could most certainly manufacture a car but say it may prove difficult to do so efficiently and cost-effectively.

“I’ve always thought that making cars was a little tougher than most realize,” says Jay Baron, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), a nonprofit organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Anyone can make a car, but try making one every few minutes that people want to buy, and that allows you a profit without significant government support. There’s the challenge.”

Apple already makes software that transports an iPhone’s interface to a car’s infotainment system.

Even though most carmakers currently operate their own factories, a few vehicles are produced through contract manufacturing. For example, a major Canadian auto supplier called Magna produces the G-Class on behalf of Mercedes and the Mini for BMW. Google has made prototype driverless cars using components from several suppliers, with contract manufacturing performed by an automotive company called Roush.

Joseph Lull, a project manager at Denso, another large major supplier of car components and technology, pointed out that upstart carmakers such as Tesla, Detroit Electric Cars, and Phoenix outsourced their first models. “You could potentially pull together enough suppliers to do it,” he says. “The biggest challenge would be the logistics.”

In this regard it may be relevant that Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has built up a reputation for being able to understand and manage complex electronics supply chains. Lull, asked if his company is currently working with any major consumer electronics firms, said: “None that I can talk about.”

All the experts contacted by MIT Technology Review agreed that the big opportunity for Apple lies in creating the software that will shape drivers’ future experience behind the wheel. Cars are already heavily computerized, but their computer systems are now becoming more connected, both internally and wirelessly to the Internet. And software companies are arguably well placed to develop technology such as automated driving.

Already a car’s interface is becoming an important distinguishing factor, and both Google and Apple are also making a foray into automobiles through software that puts the capabilities of a smartphone in the dashboard of a vehicle (see “Rebooting the Automobile”). This raises the prospect that existing carmakers could become more akin to hardware suppliers in the PC and smartphone world.

“Many existing automakers are very worried about Silicon Valley doing exactly this to them,” says MIT’s Keith. “They worry that Uber or Google or Apple will have the relationship with the customer and provide the value-added services, while the traditional automakers just become part of the supply chain.”

An existing car company, then, might be interested in partnering with Apple rather than be overtaken. Some experts say such a partnership would also help Apple produce high-quality vehicle hardware to go with its software.

Bert Bras, a professor in the mechanical engineering school at Georgia Tech, says it would also cost many billions for Apple to go into manufacturing for itself. “Apple has lots of money,” he says. “But rather than starting from scratch, I suspect they would partner with a foreign, perhaps Chinese, automaker.”

However, Bras warns that the complexity of the challenge should not be underestimated. “Just take a look at Volkswagen,” he says. “They could not get their own diesel engine to work like they wanted, and they are experts in engines and cars.”