It seems that Apple has not put aside its project of autonomous car, and returns to the fray with his idea of making a vehicle without a driver. Now he has just hired a new group of engineers to drive (or not) his driverless test cars.
The company therefore insists on its Titan project, although the progress does not seem to be very significant. They are still determined to be able to manufacture a car that does not need to be driven by a person, which at the moment seems unfeasible.
When it seemed that Apple was abandoning its autonomous car project, it returned to the fray hiring new engineers to control its test vehicles of driverless cars.
After reducing its fleet of California autonomous driving test drivers to 54 last May, Apple has been steadily increasing the number of engineers who go into such cars as the months have passed. Currently, the company has 137 drivers. In October of last year, it had 154 engineers controlling the autonomous driving test cars.
But that does not mean that there are now more test cars on the streets. Apple still owns the same 69 vehicles since August. May now go two engineers in each vehicle, instead of one as before. Or that two work shifts are done so that the test vehicle is circulating more hours a day.
In the last year, Apple’s autonomous cars have suffered two more collisions. In total, all driverless test cars have suffered six accidents. They seem few, considering that there are almost 70 cars that have circulated hundreds of thousands of kilometers without a driver. Surely the same tours driven by people would have had more accidents.
But for an autonomous driving system that in theory has to be much safer than human, there are many. We will see if one day these vehicles stop being in tests and become a reality. It gives me no….
