California Cancels Apple’s Self-Driving Car Testing Permit
Credit: iDrop News / Erick Martinez
Toggle Dark Mode
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has canceled Apple’s autonomous vehicle testing permit after Apple reportedly abandoned its plans for its “Apple Car” vehicle just over six months ago.
According to macReports, Apple’s permit for testing autonomous vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel, AVT030, was valid until April 30, 2025. However, the company officially contacted California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) on September 25 to cancel its testing Permit.
In response, the DMV formally cancelled the permit, effective September 27, 2024. This appears to have officially ended Apple’s vehicle program, although there is a good chance that the technology Apple developed during the program will be used in other projects down the line.
The DMV sent a confirmation letter to Apple via email, stating, “On September 25, 2024, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) received confirmation from Apple Inc. to cancel the Autonomous Vehicles Program Manufacturer’s Testing Permit (AVT030). This permit is hereby canceled, effective September 27, 2024.”
Apple’s permit allowed the Cupertino company to test a self-driving vehicle on public roads in the state of California, providing a safety driver was present in the vehicle and behind the wheel.
Apple used a fleet of leased Lexus SUVs equipped with an array of cameras and sensors to test autonomous driving technologies on California streets, freeways, and toll roads.
Apple cancelled its “Apple Car” self-driving project in February 2024, following several reports that the much-rumored Apple Car wouldn’t be as fantastic as observers once hoped.
Apple’s original goal was to produce a Level 5 vehicle — a self-driving car that doesn’t even need a steering wheel — by late 2022. However, the company had reportedly decided to settle for creating a Level 4 vehicle by 2026. Unfortunately, Apple’s Board of Directors became impatient and threatened to cancel the project outright if it didn’t begin showing some results.
This caused Apple’s car team to settle for a Level 2+ design instead. Level 2 is the same type of Automated Driver Assistance System (ADAS) used in Teslas and many other premium “self-driving” vehicles. Unfortunately, the decision wasn’t enough to satisfy the Board, leading to the decision to cancel the project outright.
As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported, the decision came as a surprise to the close to 2,000 employees working on the project. It was shared with the affected employees in a joint message from Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, the former Apple Watch exec and Adobe Chief Technology Officer reassigned to head Project Titan in 2021.
In March 2024, Gurman disclosed that the Apple Car’s AI brain would be powered by an Apple Silicon chip that was as powerful as four M2 Ultra chips combined.
The M2 Ultra, which is two M2 Max chips joined, boasts 134 billion transistors. The SoC Apple had developed for use in its vehicle would have easily blown that count out of the water, boasting roughly 536 billion transistors, which would have made it the largest chip ever created by any consumer technology company.
Gurman noted that the quad-M2 Ultra chip’s development was nearly complete when the vehicle project ran off of the road.
