Apple’s Self-Driving Test Car Has Been Spotted in Silicon Valley
The pictures come just two weeks after Apple was given a permit to test self-driving cars on public roads in California.
A Lexus fitted with Apple's self-driving car hardware and presumably belonging to the technology titan has been captured on camera driving around Silicon Valley, Bloomberg reports.
The pictures show the first public sighting of Apple's hardware-equipped Lexus RX450h. The car was seen this week exiting an Apple property with lidar hardware, two radars, and cameras, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier in April, Apple was given approval to test self-driving cars on public California roads by the state DMV. From the looks of things, the tech company is making good use of that recently-acquired permit.
Last week, Business Insider reported that Apple called its self-driving car tech the "Apple Automated System" on government forms.
"The development platform uses hardware and software to monitor surrounding objects and events," an Apple employee wrote on an official form, according to Business Insider. The system is "capable of sending electronic commands for steering, accelerating, and decelerating and may carry out portions of the dynamic driving task."