
Apple has 5,000 people working on autonomous cars - melling
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/ex-apple-employee-charged-with-stealing-autonomous-car-trade-secrets.html
======
omarforgotpwd
5000 people are disclosed on the project: they’re allowed to know about it.
2300 are directly working on it enough to have access to the databases.

------
Fricken
Holy Shit. I would have guessed 400 or so, following the news a couple years
ago of Project Titan shuttering plans to manufacture their own vehicle and
focus just on autonomy.

I'm not exactly sure how one would keep 5,000 people busy. They've only got
50-something vehicles actively testing on California's roads, thought they
could very well have more somewhere else.

It's hard to figure out how many people Waymo currently employs, but but they
had around 600 in 2015. I also know they subcontract out remote guidance, data
annotation, and map-making to third parties.

But 5000? Wow. They must still be serious about making their own car. wow.

~~~
King-Aaron
Consider the scale of an automotive manufacturer - General Motors has a
technical centre that can house over 21,000 employees [1] which goes to show
the scale of people involved in vehicle R&D. For a company that's effectively
just dipping it's toes into the industry, 5,000 is understandable

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Cente...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Center)

~~~
Fricken
For sure. It's just that I was previously under the assumption Apple had opted
not to manufacture a vehicle. So little information gets outside the walls of
Apple's forbidden palace.

I follow the self driving car race pretty close, and with Apple there are just
so many question marks as to how serious, and capable they are, and as to what
their strategy might be.

------
dylanhassinger
now if only they had someone working on itunes and the app store

~~~
nkkollaw
...and keyboards that actually work!

~~~
ohiovr
I won’t be a fan of an icar. It will be too long and thin and to fill up the
tank you will need to go to a special gas station.

~~~
randycupertino
And in order to fill up at a regular gas station, don't forget or lose your
icar special dongle or else the regular gas pump won't fit into your gas tank.

~~~
joejerryronnie
And every once in a while they will just decide to remove a piece of the car
and force drivers to adopt new habits - "The iCar 2 will no longer have a
steering wheel and all drivers will now steer with their tongues."

~~~
randycupertino
And whenever you upgrade the car's OS, everything you are used to totally
changes.

Congratulations, your iCar's new OS is successfully installed! Your blinker is
now where the washer fluid bar used to be and we reversed your shifter so Park
is now Reverse and 1st gear is now 4th. You're welcome!

------
XalvinX
I was, once, excited about the prospects of an iCar...back when I still was a
believer in the cult of Apple. Then I watched this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8)

I would never trust my life to an Apple product, even if it has rounded
corners (OMG!!) and they offer avocado, mauve, ecru, and navajo
(m___f__ing!!!) white color options... I think different(ly?) now.

~~~
XalvinX
after watching that video make sure to read some of the comment section...the
anti-apple sentiment is strong and growing, to be sure.

