News Roundup: Apple Admits It’s ‘Heavily Invested’ in Automated Driving, Nissan Uses Driverless Leafs to Tow Cars At Its Plants, and More

Jennifer van der Kleut

A look at some of the biggest headlines to come out of the driverless and connected-car industries in the past week:

Apple ‘investing heavily’ in driverless car software

In a recent letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration written by Apple’s director of product integrity, Steve Jenner begged U.S. regulators to embrace “fair competition” among companies working on driverless vehicle systems. Excitingly for followers of the industry’s progress, media outlets that wrote to Jenner asking about the company’s motives behind the letter got a statement in reply in which Jenner said he wrote it because “Apple is investing heavily in machine learning and automated systems.” Read more from Fox News.

 

Nissan using self-driving vehicles to tow cars around its plants

Nissan is testing the waters of driverless vehicles by using some to tow cars around its manufacturing plants in Japan. At a recent demonstration, Nissan employees hooked up a driverless Leaf to a full trailer and let the car tow the trailer around with no one at the wheel. Nissan executives say they are excited about the technology and think it will help reduce costs and improve efficiency. They said they may decide to roll the test out overseas as well. Nissan hopes to release an autonomous car by 2020. Read more from the Daily Mail.

 

 

BMW aims to out-cool Uber, starts testing driverless cars in Germany

BMW admitted last week that it will soon begin testing of driverless vehicles in Munich, Germany. The automaker’s biggest focus for the initiative is its goal of becoming the “coolest” ride-hailing firm on the market, competing with big rivals such as Uber. BMW executives said the test will consist of 40 vehicles operating within the inner parts of the city of Munich and plans to eventually roll out testing in other cities as well. Read more from The Daily Mail.