Apple has long been rumored to be working on a vehicle, and now we know it’ll be of the self-driving variety.
The Guardian reports that Project Titan is more than just a rumor, citing documents that say Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley and is looking for test areas in the San Francisco Bay area.
According to the report, Apple engineers met in May with GoMentum Station, which is a formal naval base near San Francisco that officials say is “the largest secure test facility in the world” for the “testing validation and commercialization of connected vehicle (CV) applications and autonomous vehicles (AV) technologies to define the next generation of transportation network infrastructure.”
Apple declined to comment to The Guardian. However, citing correspondence between GoMentum Station officials and Apple engineer Frank Fearon, The Guardian report quotes Fearon as saying Apple “would like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space.”
“We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Apple,” Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, owner of GoMentum Station, tells The Guardian. “We can’t tell you anything other than they’ve come in and they’re interested.”
Google has leading the race to developing self-driving cars. It recently began testing its prototypes on the roads of Mountain View, California with hopes of releasing a self-driving car by 2020.
