After years toiling away in secret on its car project, Apple Inc chief executive officer Tim Cook has for the first time laid out exactly what the company is up to in the automotive market: It is concentrating on self-driving technology.
“We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Monday last week. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important.”
“We sort of see it as the mother of all AI [artificial intelligence] projects,” Cook said in his most detailed comments to date on Apple’s plans in the car space. “It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on.”
Apple had initially been seeking to build its own car, before recalibrating those ambitions last year to prioritize the underlying technology for autonomous driving, Bloomberg News reported.
The iPhone maker had hired more than 1,000 engineers to work on Project Titan, as the car team is known internally, after it started in 2014.
Ballooning costs and headcount led to Apple veteran Bob Mansfield being given the reins of the team last year.
Cook has never before openly outlined Apple’s plans, although public filings have surfaced in recent months that provided snapshots of Apple’s efforts.
Apple in April secured a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test three self-driving sports-utility vehicles, photographs of which emerged several weeks later.
A half-dozen vehicles had been surreptitiously testing the autonomous technology on public roads in and around the San Francisco Bay area for at least a year, according to someone familiar with Project Titan.
In December last year, Steve Kenner, Apple’s director of product integrity, penned a letter to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealing the company’s interest in automotive technology. It became public when it was published on a federal Web site.
In the letter, Kenner wrote about the company’s excitement surrounding the potential for automated systems in fields like transportation.
“There is a major disruption looming there,” Cook said on Bloomberg TV, citing self-driving technology, electric vehicles and ride-hailing. “You’ve got kind of three vectors of change happening generally in the same time frame.”
In the interview on Bloomberg TV, Cook was hesitant to disclose whether Apple will ultimately manufacture its own car.
“We’ll see where it takes us,” Cook said. “We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do.”
VALUABLE STOCK: The company closed at NT$1,005 a share, on demand for AI and HPC chips, and is expected to issue a positive report during its earnings conference Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) shares rose 2.66 percent to close at a record high of NT$1,005 yesterday. as investors expect the company to continue benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) chips. TSMC is the 19th member of the local bourse’s NT$1,000 stock club, which includes smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) and electric transformer manufacturer Fortune Electric Co (華城電機). Yesterday’s rally swelled TSMC’s market capitalization to NT$26.06 trillion (US$802.3 billion) and contributed about 211 points to the TAIEX, which closed up 350.1 points, or 1.51 percent, to 23,522.53, another record high, Taiwan Stock
Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), a subsidiary of Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), yesterday said it is again offering a NT$100,000 discount for its entry-level n7 electric vehicle models. The n7’s price has gone down from NT$1.099 million to NT$999,000, Luxgen said, adding that there are 25,000 preorders for the model. MG Motor’s electric hatchback, the MG4, entered the market in the middle of last month, with a starting price of NT$990,000. China Motor Corp (中華汽車), which distributes MG vehicles in Taiwan, said it aims to sell 1,600 MG4s this year. MG, originally a British brand, was acquired by China’s SAIC Motor
Google on Monday said it is planning to invest in New Green Power Co (NGP, 永鑫能源), a solar energy developer owned by BlackRock Inc, to build 1 gigawatt of solar capacity in Taiwan to supply clean energy for its local data center and offices. “Our investment in NGP, subject to regulatory approval, will serve as development capital toward its 1 GW pipeline of new solar projects, catalyzing critical equity and debt financing for those projects,” Google’s Data Center Energy global head Amanda Peterson Corio wrote on a company blog. It did not disclose financial details. “We expect to procure up to 300 megawatts
‘MORE PRACTICAL’: If the cap were lowered, it would spark an influx of funds that would be difficult to track as insurance firms adjust to the new rules, an official said Overseas investment would remain capped at 45 percent of local insurers’ total assets, as there are scant investment tools at home and potentially significant losses from sudden divestments, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday. The commission’s comments came in response to a legislator’s concern over the effect of a proposed revision to the Insurance Act (保險法) to lower the upper limit to 25 percent. The revision was proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才). The proposed 25 percent cap is even lower than the 35 percent implemented before 2007. About 17 years ago, the legislature raised the upper limit