It is rumored that Apple's unmanned car project may be cut, and it is worth counting its development history

According to the latest report from investment research firm Lynx Equity Strategies, Apple is scaling back its self-driving car project and is even considering ending the project altogether. It is understood that the main reason for Apple's decision is the decline in iPhone sales in China, and the decline in revenue has also reduced the living space of non-core projects.

In fact, the road to Apple's autonomous driving project has not been smooth. Initially, Apple aimed for autonomous electric vehicles, then moved to autonomous vehicle systems, and now it has been revealed that it will completely abandon the autonomous driving project. The change in strategy in the field of autonomous driving shows that Apple is more than capable in this field.

To this end, the editor of International E-Business Information has sorted out the ins and outs of Apple's autonomous driving project for you:

In 2014, Apple established a project codenamed "Project Titan", which aims to develop self-driving electric vehicles, led by Steve Zadesky, who has worked at Apple for more than a decade. At that time, Apple also specially recruited several top experts in the traditional automotive industry, machine vision and autonomous driving, battery and other industries, such as Doug Betts, head of global quality control at Chrysler, and Mujeeb Ijaz, former Ford electric vehicle battery expert.

However, in January 2016, foreign media broke the news that Zadesky had left due to personal reasons, and the "Titan Project" had no person in charge, but Apple's determination to build a car was not shaken. It is understood that Apple's "Project Titan" team already had about 600 employees at that time. Then, in July, foreign media revealed that Apple had hired Bob Mansfield, a retired genius hardware engineer, to be responsible for its self-driving electric vehicle project.

Although Apple has never publicly acknowledged the existence of the Titan Project plan, the news about the plan has not stopped. But building a car is not an easy task, let alone an autonomous electric vehicle. In March 2018, foreign media reported that according to insiders, Apple has abandoned its car-making plan, and the entire team has turned to the autonomous driving platform. UBS analyst Steven Milunovich also said that Apple's Project Titan project is likely to be a transportation platform rather than a car.

On November 23, 2018, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced a patent application from Apple related to its Titan project, self-driving cars and systems, which once again aroused everyone's curiosity about the project. The new patent is a new communication and alert system that connects Apple devices to cars that alert the driver of an autonomous vehicle with a computer alert on the screen when the user is reading a message or watching a movie.

However, after the patent was exposed, the "Titan Project" had no voice again. At the same time, Apple's most concerned public attention throughout 2018 was the poor sales of its new iPhones, the signal gate incident caused by the use of Intel baseband chips, and the patent dispute with Qualcomm.

Immediately afterwards, on January 17, 2019, Apple was revealed to be reducing the scale of its self-driving car project, and was even considering ending the project altogether. Apple's decision may be the best choice to ensure its core business as much as possible, and the autonomous driving project itself requires a large and long-term investment of human, material and financial resources. However, the complete abandonment of the autonomous driving project is very surprising, because Apple has put a lot of effort into the project.

In fact, as early as July last year, domestic media reported that Apple's autonomous driving project team had 5,000 people. However, as usual, this information has not been officially certified by Apple. In addition, information obtained from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows that in January 2018, Apple launched an autonomous fleet consisting of 27 unmanned vehicles. In March 2018, the number of unmanned vehicles operated by Apple reached 45. In June 2018, Apple's unmanned vehicles had grown to 62 vehicles, with a total of 87 drivers testing these vehicles.

In addition, the autonomous driving market will undoubtedly be a trillion-level market. According to Allied Market Research, the global autonomous vehicle market will be worth $54.23 billion in 2019, and this figure will increase to $556.67 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 39.47% during this period. It is worth noting that it is generally recognized that the future L5 level autonomous vehicles under all working conditions will be realized in 2025. This means that after the successful mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, the market size in this field will be even larger.

If Apple completely abandons the project at this time, it means that the company has voluntarily given up a huge market cake. However, Apple is not the only technology company that has crossed over autonomous driving projects, such as Waymo, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, etc., which are autonomous driving startups under Google's parent company, all have layouts in this field.

A few days ago, Waymo has launched the world's first commercial self-driving car service in the United States. To this end, a new brand has been established to operate, competing directly with Uber and Lyft.

Baidu's Apllo 3.5 has recently been launched at CES 2019, and its autonomous driving level has reached L4, which can complete the driving of complex urban road conditions and cope with driving scenarios such as urban centers and residential areas. At the same time, as of 2019, Baidu has established cooperative relationships with more than 130 equipment manufacturers, automotive suppliers and chip manufacturers.

Alibaba lays out multiple links such as urban underlying infrastructure, automotive operating systems and terminal autonomous driving applications. In April last year, Alibaba was exposed by the media that it was conducting unmanned vehicle road tests, and the vehicles it tested were modified from Lincoln MKZ. It is understood that its goal is L4 and above autonomous driving. In September last year, Alibaba announced an upgrade to its operating system strategy and released a new AliOS brand. At present, AliOS is gradually completing the construction of the whole ecosystem, and its automotive partners include SAIC, Ford, Dongfeng Citroen and other car companies and related models.

Tencent is the latest BAT to deploy autonomous driving, but the company is currently accelerating its catch-up in autonomous driving. Tencent positions itself as a complete software and service provider for autonomous driving systems, and it plays a role as a facilitator in this field. At the 2018 Tencent Global Partner Conference Smart Travel Sub-forum, Tencent Autonomous Driving debuted as an independent brand and released three advantageous technologies, including simulation platform, high-precision map and data cloud service platform.