New Evidence That ‘Apple Titan’ Self-Driving Car Is In The Works

August 17, 2015 9:08 am

You may have heard murmurings at some time or another about a so-called “Apple Titan” self-driving car project from the same Silicon Valley tech company that gave the world the iPod. Yet for all the attention and circulation that these rumors received, they’d mostly remained just that: rumors.

However, The Guardian has uncovered some rather convincing evidence, which points not only to the existence of the Apple Titan project, but also, toward the possibility that it is farther along in development than most anyone would have guessed.

GoMentum Station

First, some background. GoMentum Station resides on a retired 2,100-acre naval weapons station near San Francisco, California. It is being used as high-security grounds for “testing validation and commercialization of connected vehicle (CV) applications and autonomous vehicles (AV) technologies to define the next generation of transportation network infrastructure,” according to officials. That’s a fitting reappropriation for the facility, as 1) it has some 20 miles of paved highways and city streets, and 2) it is guarded by the military.

And reportedly, The Guardian has uncovered some correspondence between an Apple Engineer named Frank Fearson, and this massive, secured testing facility. The correspondence reads: “We would … like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it].”

This certainly points to the existence of an Apple Titan autonomous car, and one that’s far enough along that it warrants testing, but the tech giant has yet to comment. But according to The Guardian, Randy Iwasaki – the Executive Director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, which owns the GoMentum Station – did offer this: “We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Apple. We can’t tell you anything other than they’ve come in and they’re interested.”

So far, the Apple Titan project has proven a very elusive thing, with secrecy not only being maintained from the public, but from the majority of those within Apple, Inc. as well. The team working on Apple Titan are believed to be utilizing an unassuming office in Sunnyvale, California, four miles from the Apple headquarters in Cupertino.

And Fearon, enigmatically, signs all his emails with a question mark.