Very recently, the US-based tech giant Apple has doubled the number of self-driving cars that are currently on the road. The news has been confirmed by California Department of Motor Vehicles. Apple was given the green signal to take its autonomous cars to test on the California roads back in April last year. The program started with just 3 self-driving cars. The number rose to 27 in January 2018 and as of now, 55 of Apple’s self-driving vehicles are currently on the road. Speculations are being made that if the project maintains its current pace, consumers would get access to these cars by 2019.
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The project currently as 83 top-class drivers who are to test these self-driving cars. Of course, California DMV has only provided Apple the permission to test the self-driving cars in the presence of expert supervision. To be able to have self-driving cars driving around the city without any human supervision, Apple will have to petition for a permit with the California DMV. Waymo has also been confirmed to file an application to test its autonomous vehicles without human supervision on California’s roads. California DMV has also revealed that another company has filed an application to get the permission for driverless testing. No details of this company were revealed by the DMV though.
It is clear that the self-driving vehicle scene is catching fire in California. With major companies like Tesla, Apple, and Drive.Ai putting in serious some serious work on their respective autonomous vehicle projects. Tesla and Drive.Ai are currently being outranked by Apple, although the true leader in the race is the native organization GM Cruise that has over 100 autonomous vehicles on the road.
One of the biggest reasons why even the most renowned tech giants of the world have to file mountains of paperwork to get their vehicles on the road is the safety in autonomous vehicles. Take, for instance, the fatal accident that shook the industry recently where one of the self-driving test-vehicles of Uber was working with a misaligned software which ultimately created a situation where the driver could not react in time to stop the accident. Uber’s self-driving vehicles have matured quite a bit by now but this accident shows that the safety of such vehicles on the roads is still an issue. This is one of the main reasons why the companies themselves are also being very careful.
