Apple Car's self-driving technology has been confirmed to have run nearly 21,000 kilometers or 13,000 miles in 2021, according to a new filing of the Cupertino tech giant from the California Department of Motor Vehicles or the DMV.

Apple Car Gets One Step Further | Cupertino Giant Hires Director of Tesla's Autopilot Software in Effort to Produce Self-Driving Vehicles
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Apple Car Gets One Step Further | Cupertino Giant Hires Director of Tesla's Autopilot Software in Effort to Produce Self-Driving Vehicles

Apple Car's Self-Driving Tech

Apple's secretive car project has been rumored for years already.

In fact, there have been concrete details that confirmed that it did exist, such as the leadership shakeup from its rumored executives, as well its reported partners.

Nevertheless, the iPhone maker has yet to confirm the existence of its car project.

However, this time around, a document further proves that Apple has been working on the self-driving technology of its car project, as per a report by Jalopnik.

The news outlet further noted that the DMV requires firms, which are testing their self-driving systems, to log the number of kilometers that it has been tested, at least on the roads of California.

It is worth noting that other EV carmakers, such as Waymo and Cruise also filed for the testing of the self-driving vehicles.

Meanwhile, the biggest EV maker out there, Elon Musk's Tesla, failed to file such paperwork for its self-driving tech in 2021.

On the other hand, even though Apple Car's self-driving tech has yet to be officially announced by the iPhone maker, it disclosed the number of kilometers it has already run.

To be more precise, the filing of Apple Car revealed that its self-driving technology has already reached a total of 20,921 kilometers of testing from last year alone.

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Apple Car Testing Fleet

On top of that, the Disengagement Report of the California DMV went on to disclose the number of cars that Apple has licensed for testing its autonomous driving feature.

The testing fleet of the Cupertino giant is 37 vehicles in total. However, only 35 of them were part of the 22,000 kilometer testing from last year. Two of them were left out from the tests for reasons that the filing did not disclose, according to a recent report by Gizmodo.

What's more, the filing further revealed that Apple self-reported that a human driver was forced to take over its self-driving technology in several incidents.

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(Photo : Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

The test drivers of Apple had to control the vehicles in 662 incidents. As such, the average of disengagements from the testing is one for every 32 km.

The Cupertino giant also reported some of the other issues that their test drivers have experienced from the self-driving tech.

In some instances, the autonomous driving feature failed to subscribe to the norms of driving etiquette. Not to mention that there were incidents wherein the system did not follow traffic signals.

Interestingly, Apple has been testing out its car project in the streets of California with no leaked photos of its insight.

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Written by Teejay Boris

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