Maletic reportedly met with a trio of DMV executives familiar with self-driving cars, including deputy director Bernard Soriano and chief of strategic planning Stephanie Dougherty, who are co-sponsors of California’s autonomous vehicle regulation project. Attendees included a member of Apple’s senior legal team – logical, considering how deeply involved lawmaking will be in the future of autonomous driving – plus a handful of the DMV’s self-driving advocates and its chief counsel.
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Google recently confirmed that it is not interested in becoming a vehicle manufacturer itself, but Apple’s long-term plans here remain a mystery. Maletic wrote the mutual confidentiality agreement signed by GoMentum Station, a disused military base near San Francisco with miles of empty streets for driverless cars, when Apple inquired about testing there in May. The state has been tasked with developing self-driving vehicle regulations for public roadways. A draft of these guidelines was meant to be due at the beginning of 2015, but is running behind schedule.
Exactly what was discussed is unknown, though the regulations in question will cover everything from how much manual control a driver of an autonomous auto should be able to reclaim in the case of an emergency, to how the vehicles will intercommunicate.
It was originally reported in February that Apple has over 1,000 employees working on Project Titan, many coming from high-level positions at automotive companies. Apple will also have to report any accident or automation malfunction to the department within ten days of the incident.
This evidence, the report claims, is enough to suggest that Apple’s autonomous vehicle, whatever it might be “is nearly ready for public view”, although such a claim goes largely unproven.
“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 said earlier this month, the Australian Financial Review reports.
If Apple acquires a permit it will be required to disclose a good amount of information about its cars.
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That work is happening at a low-profile office and lab complex in Sunnyvale codenamed SG05, where a $4.6m refurbishment that began last July is still incomplete.
