A few miles from Apple’s headquarters here, a gold SUV carrying a large, boxy sensor on its roof crossed a four-way intersection this summer and hung a left just like any other car on the street.
But that car was one of 67 vehicles outfitted with autonomous capabilities that the highly secretive company can test in California, public records show, a number that more than tripled in scale over the past year.
The sharp rise in the miles tested on California’s roads suggest that Apple has been quietly ramping up its autonomous ambitions. Records show its cars were tested over 450,000 miles in California between December 2022 and November 2023 — more than tripling from the year before, and the biggest jump among companies with the most testing in the state. While it’s unclear what the company hopes to accomplish with its cars, Apple is pouring resources into a tumultuous industry in which others have lost permits and faced lawsuits, recalls and public frustration over erratic behavior from some of the cars. It’s a unique thing for Apple to test a product in the public eye where it could be subject to intense public and regulatory scrutiny, as the company.
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