Apple Won't Be Building Its Own Autonomous Car... Because Of Boardroom Fights

Apple has dumped the idea of an Apple-branded self-driving car – because senior figures couldn’t agree on what they wanted it to be.

After investing millions of dollars in research and development for technologies related to autonomous driving, Apple has finally reached a point where its own real-world Johnny Cab just wasn’t possible.

According to reports in the New York Times, Apple’s Steve Zadesky had preferred a semi-autonomous traditional car, like any Tesla with Autopilot, while chief designer Jonathan Ive wanted to “reimagine the automobile experience” from the ground up. Each had his own support within the project, apparently causing huge friction.

Instead of building its own, Apple has resolved to simply build tech to facilitate autonomy in car makers’ machines. The idea is to create ready-made packages of tech that can be integrated into cars at the design stage, which will be better value-for-money for a lot of manufacturers.

The team has worked on new ways of disguising the lidar systems that currently sit like awkward vultures on top of driverless cars’ roofs, looking gawky and out of place. They had also experimented with swapping the steering wheel for a sphere that would have given “better lateral movement,” whatever the New York Times journalist means by that. Still, this does mean that at least Apple won’t be dropping a hideous autonomous monstrosity on us, as per the Google car…