It is rumored that the Apple unmanned car project may be cut, and its development history has been counted

According to a new report by investment research firm Lynx Equity Strategies, Apple is scaling back its self-driving car program and even considering ending it entirely. 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 reduced the living space of non-core projects.

In fact, the road to Apple's self-driving project has not been smooth. Initially, Apple aimed to self-driving electric vehicles, later moved to self-driving car systems, and now it has been revealed that it will abandon the self-driving project altogether. The change of strategy in the field of autonomous driving shows from the side that Apple has more than enough in this field and is insufficient.

To this end, the international electronic business editor sorted out the ins and outs of Apple's autonomous driving project for you:

In 2014, Apple launched a program, code-named Project Titan, which aims to develop self-driving electric cars, led by Steve Zadesky, who has worked at Apple for more than a decade. At that time, Apple also specially recruited Doug Betts, Chrysler's global head of quality control, Mujeeb Ijaz, a former Ford electric vehicle battery expert, and several other top experts in the traditional automotive industry, machine vision and autonomous driving, and batteries.

However, in January 2016, foreign media broke the news that Zadesky left due to personal reasons, and the "Titan Project" was gone, but Apple's determination to build cars 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 hired Bob Mansfield, a retired genius hardware engineer, to take charge of its self-driving electric vehicle project.

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

On November 23, 2018, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application by 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 type of communication and alarm system that connects Apple devices to the car and alerts the driver of the autonomous vehicle through on-screen computer alerts when the user is reading information or watching a movie.

However, after the patent was exposed, the "Titan Project" was silent. At the same time, Apple's most public attention throughout 2018 was the poor sales of its new iPhone, the signal gate incident caused by the use of Intel baseband chips, and the patent dispute with Qualcomm.

Then, on January 17, 2019, it was revealed that Apple was scaling back its self-driving car project and even considering ending it entirely. Apple's decision may be the best choice to try to ensure its core business, and the self-driving project itself requires a large and sustained investment of human and material resources. However, it is surprising to completely abandon the self-driving project, because Apple has put a lot of effort into the project.

In fact, as early as July last year, there were already domestic media reports that Apple's self-driving project team had 5,000 people. However, as usual, this information is not officially certified by Apple. In addition, information obtained from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows that in January 2018, Apple opened its self-driving fleet, which consists of 27 driverless vehicles. In March 2018, the number of driverless vehicles operated by Apple reached 45. In June 2018, Apple's driverless cars had grown to 62 vehicles, with a total of 87 drivers testing them.

In addition, the autonomous driving market will undoubtedly be a trillion-level market. According to Allied Market Research, the global autonomous vehicle market value will reach $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 widely recognized that the future all-weather L5 autonomous vehicles will be realized by 2025. This means that after the successful mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, the market size of this field will be even larger.

If Apple completely abandons the project at this time, it will represent that the company has voluntarily given up a huge market cake. However, technology companies are not the only ones doing cross-driving projects in autonomous driving projects, such as Waymo, Baidu, Ali, Tencent, etc. under Google's parent company.

Waymo has launched the world's first commercial self-driving car service in the United States. To that end, a new brand was set up to operate in direct competition with Uber and Lyft.

Baidu's Apllo 3.5 has recently been launched at CES 2019, and its autonomous driving level reaches 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 partnerships with more than 130 device manufacturers, automotive suppliers and chip manufacturers.

Alibaba lays out multiple links such as urban infrastructure, automotive operating systems, and terminal autonomous driving applications. In April last year, Alibaba was exposed by the media to be conducting road tests of unmanned vehicles, and the vehicles it tested were modified from the Lincoln MKZ. It is understood that its goal is autonomous driving at the level of L4 and above. Last September, Alibaba announced its strategy to upgrade its operating system 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 in 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 of autonomous driving systems, and it plays the role of a facilitator in this field. At the 2018 Tencent Global Partner Conference Smart Mobility Sub-forum, Tencent Autonomous Driving debuted as an independent brand, and released three advantageous technologies, including a simulation platform, a high-precision map and data cloud service platform.