Apple have bought self-driving startup Drive.ai. Reports suggest the company was once valued at USD $200m and that Apple are still pursuing “Project Titan”, their autonomous-car project.
Software engineers from the startup have reportedly already been
transferred to Apple.
Drive.ai were running a small fleet of test shuttles based on Nissan NV200 vans in the US state of Texas, but were experiencing financial difficulties and had been in talks with potential buyers. Drive.ai recently filed with the state of California a notice of intent to close their business and lay off 90 workers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Drive.ai say they offered one of the US’ first self-driving car-on-demand services open to the general public. In October 2018, Drive.ai operated the Texas Rangers stadium, Arlington Convention Center, CenterPoint office complex, and surrounding areas as part of the city’s transportation technology program. The company say the geofenced nature of their concept reduced the technical problems associated with other driverless tests. Pickups and dropoffs happen at designated stops—the vehicles wait to be called via an app and are painted bright orange; they also only operated only in daylight.
