Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has spoken openly for the first time about his company’s plans in the automotive sector.
During an interview with Bloomberg, Cook said that Apple is focusing on building an autonomous system for cars, putting an end to the secrecy surrounding the company’s car project.
“It’s a core technology that we view as very important”, he said. “We see it as the mother of all AI projects. It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”
Apple had initially planning to build its own car, before switching its focus to the development of technology for autonomous driving. The company’s Project Titan, as it was called internally, has hired more than 1,000 engineers to work on the project since 2014.
Cook has never before openly talked about Apple’s self-driving project. “There is a major disruption looming there,” Cook said, 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.”
As for whether Apple will build its own car, Cook preferred to keep his cards closed. “We’ll see where it takes us,” he said. “We’re not really saying from a product point of view what we will do.”