This week I found out that Apple has decided to bring back Bob Mansfield to its management team, one of the key people in the development process of many successful Apple products, and the change comes with an even bigger one for the Titan project, which aimed to launch an electric car by 2020, and then 2021.
According to new information that appeared today, the Titan project no longer aims to launch an electric car, but to develop an automatic guidance system for cars, the development of a car occupying second place at the moment, and the change is an extremely interesting one.
It is possible that Bob Mansfield realized that developing a car is too difficult and that Apple will need more than 5 years to achieve this goal, so he changed the main goal to the development of an automatic guidance system for cars, the latter being very difficult anyway.
In order to fulfill this new objective, those from Apple made new hires for the Titan project team, former Blackberry and Ford engineers joining the Apple team, one of them being the head of the team that developed the QNX operating system, which sits at the basis of many entertainment systems used in cars.
The initiative is now prioritizing the development of an autonomous driving system, although it is not abandoning efforts to design Apple's own vehicle. That leaves options open should the company eventually decide to partner with or acquire an established car maker, rather than building a car itself. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.
At the moment the Titan project is composed of 3 distinct teams led by Bob Mansfield, one of them developing sensors, the second developing the software for autonomous guidance and cars, and the third developing the hardware for this system, but the most probably also for the eventual car.
Given that it is no longer focused on the development of an electric car, Apple could collaborate with car manufacturers in the future to sell its autonomous driving system, but it will take several years before it is good enough developed to be widely used in cars.
