Apple Leases Cars from Hertz to Test Self-Driving Vehicles

In recent news Apple, has leased a few cars from car rental company, Hertz Global Holdings Inc HTZ, to test its self-driving car technology.

Reportedly, Apple has leased Lexus RX450h SUV models from Donlen, a subsidiary of Hertz. Shares of Apple hardly saw much impact. However, shares of Hertz jumped over 13% following the reports.

The development comes on the heels of Alphabet's GOOGLE self driving car unit Waymo's tie up with Avis Budget Group CAR. The collaboration aims to support and service Waymo's growing autonomous vehicle fleet.

While talking to Bloomberg TV last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook, confirming longstanding rumors, stated that the company was indeed working on a self-driving car technology artificial intelligence (AI) project. As a matter of fact, he referred to the project as the 'mother of all AI projects.?

For a while now, there has been tremendous speculation about Apple's autonomous car-technology development efforts, which is apparently codenamed Project Titan.

Project Titan has been in the news since 2014. Initially, it was reported that Apple was working on an 'iCar.? There were numerous reports of the company making sound talent acquisitions as well as collaborating with the likes of BMW for the car design. VP of Product Design, Steve Zadesky was permitted to set up a 1,000-strong workforce for the project.

Later on, the 'iCar? rumors lost steam as the project was reportedly marred by conflicts and management troubles. Following this, the company decided to prune some of the workforce assigned to the project. In Jan 2016, with the resignation of Zadesky, things became more blurred. However, Bob Mansfield was reportedly brought on board at this point.

It was speculated then that Apple may not be designing a full-fledged car but an autonomous self-driving car technology platform. Stated Mark Wright tech analyst for Vision Venture Capital Group

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This release was published on openPR.