Exclusive: Apple Discusses Potential Autonomous Car Sensor Suppliers – Sources

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc. has discussed with at least four companies as potential suppliers of next-generation lidar sensors for autonomous cars, evaluating the technology of the company while working on its own lidar unit, three people familiar with the discussions said.

These changes provide further evidence of Apple's renewed ambitions to participate in the autonomous vehicle derby, an effort it calls the Titan project. Discussions focus on the next-generation lidar, a sensor providing a three-dimensional view of the road.

Apple is looking for smaller, cheaper and easier to mass-produce LIDAR units than the current technology, said the three people. The iPhone maker is setting the bar high to require a "revolutionary design," said one of the regulars of the talks. People have refused to name the companies that Apple has approached.

The sensor effort means that Apple wants to develop the entire hardware chain to guide autonomous vehicles and has joined automakers and investors in the race for winning technologies.

Current lidar systems, including Velodyne Inc. units mounted on Apple's fleet of self-piloted test vehicles, use pulses of laser light to provide accurate images of the environment around the car. But systems can cost $ 100,000 and use mechanical parts to scan laser scanners on the road.

This makes them too bulky and prone to failure for use in mass-produced vehicles. These shortcomings have resulted in a billion dollar investment in dozens of startups and mature businesses to make the lidar smaller, cheaper and more robust.

Apple's interest in next-generation lidar sensors is due to the fact that it has significantly increased its road testing, while using the services of Tesla Inc. and Google Alphabet Inc.

Apple's Titan project does not aim to build its own vehicle or provide the hardware and software components of a stand-alone car while associating with a partner for the entire vehicle.

Apple's interest in cheaper lidar systems is that it wants to control the "perception stack" of sensors, computers and software to drive a stand-alone vehicle, regardless of the vehicle manufacturer, said a other person familiar with the interviews. The three people familiar with the interviews refused to be identified because the discussions are not public.

In addition to assessing potential external vendors, Apple would have its own internal lidar sensor in development, said two people.

Waymo, a company owned by Alphabet, has taken the same path by assembling a sensor and a computer system, while entering into vehicle purchase agreements with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

Apple gets "a lot of options by working on the stack of perception," said the second person familiar with the interviews. "Bringing a passenger car to the market is very difficult, and there is no reason for the moment to move up a gear."

LOWER THE COSTS

The designs sought by Apple could potentially be realized with conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques, said the four people familiar with the discussions.

This could potentially lower prices from several thousand to several hundred dollars, as sensors are produced in greater numbers, such as phone chips and other devices. Apple also wants sensors capable of detecting several hundred meters on the road.

This requirement indicates that Apple is interested in fully autonomous vehicles, unlike the more limited features such as adaptive cruise control used today, said two people aware of the problem.

"They are not happy with most of what they see," said the first person familiar with the case. "They are looking for a revolutionary design."

A third person familiar with this case said that Apple was looking for a "design-oriented" sensor that was stylish and discreet enough to integrate into the overall lines of a vehicle.

Apple declined to comment.

Apple has already investigated the construction of its own vehicle. The company had a team of over a dozen engineers dedicated to painstaking tasks, such as silently closing doors instead of slamming, said a fourth person informed about it.

Last year, Apple rehired Doug Field, an Apple veteran who held the position of chief engineer of Tesla, to work on Project Titan. The project has about 1200 people, according to a count in court documents.

Field put its footprint on the effort by laying off about 190 workers, but also hiring key employees such as Michael Schwekutsch, who oversaw electric transmission technology at Telsa. Apple has also increased its test miles in California, browsing nearly 80,000 last year against 800 the year before.