A rumor that shopping lidar would suggest that Apple is still serious about autonomy

Apple has been talking to at least four different companies about buying lidar sensors, reports Reuters. Apple would also work on a homemade lidar sensor. The news suggests that Apple is still taking seriously its autonomous car effort, known internally as Project Titan.

Apple has not publicly revealed the type of self-driving technology it is working on, and reports indeed suggest that the company's plans have evolved over time. Back in 2015, the Wall Sreet Journal announced that Apple was developing an electric car and that hundreds of people were working on the project. The following year, the New York Times announced that Apple was cutting back the project and was looking to partner with an existing automaker rather than building a car from scratch. In 2017, the Times reported that Apple had "rejected any notion of an Apple-branded autonomous vehicle and instead was working on the underlying technology that allows a car to drive itself."

Last year, Apple rehired Doug Field, a former Apple executive who had left to oversee Tesla's automotive engineering, once again sparking speculation that Apple could get into manufacturing. In January, Apple fired about 200 Titan Project engineers and reassigned others in a shakeup led by Field.

Despite all these upheavals, Apple still seems to devote significant resources to this effort. Reuters says that there are about 1,200 people left in the project after the layoffs earlier this year.

In particular, the company is looking for sensors with a range of several hundred meters. This suggests that Apple is developing a technology for fully autonomous cars moving at high speed. Slower vehicles can cope with cheaper and shorter range sensors. Companies working to add lidar to next-generation driver assistance systems generally believe that short-range lidar is sufficient.

The fact that Apple buys lidar does not necessarily mean that the company will build its own vehicles. Perhaps Apple could try to develop a turn-key battery that can be licensed to existing automakers – the same business model applied by the well-known Aurora self-driving startup. Apple might even be looking for lidar sensors to use on its next generation of stand-alone prototypes while developing a software-only product. Or most likely, Apple has not made a final decision about what kind of product to create and keeps its options open by simultaneously developing several different technologies.