Today’s Apple event will update fanboys on the latest iPhones, iPads, and potentially a new Apple TV. This fanboy is hoping to get a glimpse of Apple’s self-driving car, but the likelihood of that happening is the same as Tom Brady never hearing about Deflategate ever again.
One can hope, after all, rumors have been swirling that Apple is working on a self-driving car. Apple doesn’t usually comment on products that are in development, so I won’t hold my breath.
But there are many experts who say it makes sense for Apple to pursue self-driving cars, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“If you look at a company the size of Apple … for Apple to think about doing things that are progressive for the company moving forward it has to be something pretty large in terms of the amount that is spent on that category,” Wozniak tells the audience at the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association Limited’s (AVCAL) Alpha conference in Melbourne, according to The Australian Financial Review.
“That’s why I tend to believe all the rumors about Apple working on either electric or self-driving cars … because there’s a lot of money in vehicles. It’s trillions of dollars.”
The rumors became more serious in mid-August when a report uncovered 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. The report says Apple engineers met in May with GoMentum Station, a formal naval base near San Francisco that officials say is the largest secure test facility in the world for autonomous vehicles.
“Self-driving cars are so important in everyone’s lives, and it’s such a huge market when you consider the cost of roads, the cost of cars, the costs of the lasered traffic,” Wozniak says. “Insurance will be a different issue, accidents will go way down.”
Apple hasn’t confirmed or denied plans for a self-driving car, but that didn’t stop Apple fanatics from taking to the drawing board and coming up with their dream designs. There even was a contest recently, before we knew the car would be self-driving, that called on designers to imagine what the rumored Apple Car might look like.
