Apple confirms plans for self-driving cars

Apple is developing a self-driving car system, CEO Tim Cook has confirmed. Cook told Bloomberg the technology corporation was concentrating its efforts on self-driving technology, and said “it’s a core technology that we view as very important.” “We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects,” he added. “It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects to actually work on.” Cook wouldn’t be drawn on whether the company was also considering manufacturing its own self-driving car “We're not saying from a product point of view where it will take us, but we are being straightforward that it's a core technology that we view as very important,” he said. In October 2016, Blooomberg reported that Apple scaled back its ambitious plans to create a driverless vehicle, cutting hundreds of jobs, and chose instead to focus on developing an autonomous driving system. At the time, executives were given until late 2017 to prove that it was feasible to continue pursuing autonomous technology. Apple first received a permit from the California state government to trial self-driving cars in March this year and is one of a growing number of car makers and tech companies working towards launching autonomous vehicles in the near future. Ford, Honda, Google, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Toyota, Uber, Volvo, Jaguar-Land Rover, BMW, Nissan, GM, Audi, Hyundai, Bosch, and the PSA Group have all began developing self-driving cars, or have committed to putting fully autonomous vehicles on the road in the next five to 15 years.