Apple is looking for sensors that will be cutting edge “four to five years from now," giving us a better idea of when the car may arrive. We're probably looking at 2025 at the earliest. 

Apparently, Apple is in active talks with a number of companies that can supply it with the LiDAR sensors.

The companies reportedly asked not to be identified, due to the “private nature of the discussions." Presumably, they may also be worried that being publicly associated with the Apple Car will lead to Apple canceling talks. Supposedly, such a reveal was behind the sudden cancelation of the deal between Apple and Hyundai/Kia, after reports came out that they would both be involved in manufacturing the Apple Car.

LiDAR is a common component of self-driving cars, and almost every autonomous vehicle we’ve seen so far has been equipped with them. The system uses lasers as a form of radar to measures the distance between it and other objects based on how long it takes for the light to be reflected back to the sensors. Doing this allows a LiDAR system to basically create an image of its surroundings and thus “see” the area around it.

The iPhone 12 Pro does something similar with the LiDAR sensors in its rear camera array, only that's used for better depth detection in photos and augmented reality apps.

Apple Car looking for LiDAR

As mentioned, Apple is said to be looking for companies to provide “next-generation” LiDAR systems that will be “considered cutting edge four to five years from now”. 

This would suggest a 2025-2026 launch window is currently on the cards for the Apple Car. That corroborates with some of the later estimates we’ve already heard from analysts, and a recent Bloomberg report claiming Apple’s own employees aren't expecting the car to be ready until at least 2025.

Some reports have claimed Apple will have the car ready as early as 2024. But the fact it’s still sourcing components and looking for a manufacturing partner suggests this won’t be the case. Whatever way you look at things, the Apple Car is still quite a way off.

The main question is what is Apple hoping to achieve with the Apple Car. The company has a history of taking existing technology and making it appealing to the masses; the iPhones did that for smartphones. 

The Apple Car is something new, that’s for sure. But what we’ve heard suggests it isn’t that different from other autonomous vehicles that have been in development by other tech and automotive giants.

Then again if anyone can make people see the potential behind new and emerging technologies, it’s Apple. The brand name alone is usually enough to get people excited.

The crucial thing about the Apple Car is that it’s not being designed as part of an autonomous fleet that you have to summon via an app. The kind that would be completely useless if you live in areas that aren’t being served. It’s a private vehicle that you keep in your garage, just like any other. It just happens to drive itself while you do whatever it is you do to stay occupied. 

But as we’ve seen, it probably won’t be arriving for quite some time.

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Apple Inc is said to produce a passenger vehicle including its own breakthrough technology. The Inc has targeted the year 2024 for advancing its self-driving car technology.

Project Titan, The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts made their way unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. Apple even drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and fired 190 people from the team in 2019.

Apple is now advanced enough so it aims to build a vehicle for costumers. Apple’s goal of building a personal vehicle for the mass market contrasts with rivals. Apple’s main strategy is to build a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range. 

Apple has declined to comment on its plans or future products.

Even for Apple, a company that makes hundreds of millions of electronic products each year, it is challenging to make a vehicle.

A person who worked on Project Titan said "If there is one company on the planet that has the resources to do that, it’s probably Apple. But at the same time, it’s not a cellphone,” 

Apple is expected to rely on a manufacturing partner to build vehicles though it is still unclear who will assemble the vehicle. There is still a chance Apple will decide to reduce the scope of its efforts to an autonomous driving system that would be integrated with a car made by a traditional automaker.

The start of production could possibly be pushed to 2025 or beyond owing to pandemic. 

Apple is said to have decided to make use of outside partners for elements of the system, including lidar sensors, which help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road.

Some of Apple's internally developed lidar sensors might feature Apple's car. Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro models feature lidar sensors.

Source: Reuters

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At the end of 2014, when Shinzo Abe, then Prime Minister, announced in a speech that Apple was building its first technology center in Japan, high-profile foreign investment was praised as a success of its economic policy.

It also fueled immediate speculation that the iPhone manufacturer might be looking for a Japanese partner for its secretive project to build autonomous electric vehicles.

So it was only natural that market scrutiny would once again fall on Japan’s eight carmakers after the US tech giant halted talks on an automotive tie-up with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia.

In the past two weeks of financial results, almost every Japanese carmaker has been asked whether it has been approached by Apple to take part in its car efforts. The responses from Mazda, Subaru, Nissan, and Honda have varied from a “no comment” to indicating vague readiness to work with tech companies. 

Apple’s search in Japan seems genuine, with Nissan being briefly approached by the group in recent months. But, with clashing visions of branding strategy, the chances of a car-building partnership between the two appear low. 

For Japanese carmakers, Apple’s courtship is double-edged. If the US group picks a Japanese partner and its foray into cars is successful, the alliance could be a powerful force in the global shift towards zero-emission vehicles. On the other hand, a tie-up to build Apple-branded cars could downgrade Japanese carmakers to what some outraged executives say is a supplier of “moving boxes”. 

Japan’s storied electronics industry has faced a period of soul-searching after companies such as Sharp and Panasonic shifted focus from being the face of consumer products to a supplier of components to Apple and Tesla.

But shifting from a parts supplier to an assembler like Foxconn would take Japanese manufacturing to a whole new level. The psychological blow will be even bigger for the automotive industry, which accounts for 20 per cent of the country’s exports — a contribution to the economy that is even larger than that of German carmakers, according to research firm Euromonitor.

In some ways, Apple’s interest is a testimony of the quality of the country’s just-in-time manufacturing, which is well-known to Apple through its existing relationship with more than 900 suppliers in Japan.

From the US company’s perspective, the fragmentation of Japan’s auto industry is appealing since smaller players will not be able to make the enormous investments required for the shift to electric vehicles. Even before the race for battery-powered cars has seriously kicked off, the country’s eight carmakers combined are worth less than half of Tesla’s $750bn market value. 

For now, companies from Subaru, Suzuki Motor to Mazda have formed capital tie-ups with industry leader Toyota, but such loose alliances will not be a permanent solution for survival. Faced with an uncertain future, some may be attracted to Apple’s capital and branding strength that has the potential to take electric vehicles mainstream. 

In recent weeks, talk of Apple interest has lifted the shares of Nissan, its partner Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda. Investors have tended to focus on struggling companies that have strong technology and presence in the US but weaker balance sheets and extra plant capacity due to sluggish sales. However, the gains have been short-term.

Not surprisingly, Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker by the number of vehicles sold, did not face any questions on Apple during its financial presentation. 

Worldwide, carmakers are already working closely with tech companies, with Google sibling Waymo working with Jaguar, Volvo, Renault, and Nissan. Toyota has also partnered with Aurora, the Amazon-backed start-up, which recently acquired Uber’s autonomous driving unit.

Apple has remained consistently silent about its car ambitions and it is unclear what exact conditions it is seeking from potential partners. As Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s chief operating officer, recently said, the existing tie-ups with tech companies have involved adapting their services to products of carmakers, but Apple may be looking to flip that relationship to adapting the vehicles to its technology and services.

However, delivering large volumes of high-quality vehicles is not easy for tech companies to replicate immediately. To turn a tie-up with Apple into an opportunity, Japanese carmakers would need to negotiate ruthlessly while they still have a strong hand.

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