Apple Reportedly Buys The Autonomous Driving Startup Drive.ai

The famous technological company – Apple has recently bought Drive.ai – a self-driving startup with the aim of bolstering the ambitions of autonomous cars.  According to the Axios report, Apple said that as part of the deal, they have hired many engineers from Drive.ai and gained possession of Drive.ai’s cars.

As reported in a California regulatory filing, the self-driving startup used to have the value of over $200 million, but it stopped its operations in the middle of June. On the report of Axios, Apple had confirmation about the acquisition, but it did not reveal any terms in the deal.

According to the deal, the iDevice maker has had no plan to give up the autonomous car program called Project Titan. The company, in January, cut down over 200 workers from the secret project. Nevertheless, in the data collected by Thinknum, the company has continued to hire more employees for the autonomy field.

Founded in 2015, the Mountain View from California developed a retrofit kit to add self-driving systems to current cars.

Drive.ai released the first autonomous shuttle service last July, in Texas. It is a free program and relied on the new application of Drive.ai, allowing ride-hailing service in one among autonomous vans.

There was a slight difference between those vans and those with Waymo livery. There are square outcroppings included on each side, allowing surrounding people to be aware of current situations no matter whether the van is slowly running at a crosswalk when somebody passes or stopped on the street while waiting for a customer.

Thanks to the local transit authority in Frisco, Drive.ai could design its autopilot project and take time to prepare the vehicles themselves. Drive.ai spent 4 months traveling and checking very carefully the geofenced route and also the parking lots.