Apple has added two dozen vehicles to its autonomous automobile fleet within the final six months, elevating the full variety of automobiles to 27.

Bloomberg reviews  the corporate has registered 24 Lexus RX450h SUVs with the California Division of Motor Automobiles since July 2017. The vehicles have already been noticed on the street.

Here is the Automotive that #Apple’s utilizing to check its autonomous automotive expertise. Story with @mhbergen. https://t.co/jHLnJDRjoS pic.twitter.com/zTezUmcZwC

— Alex Webb (@atbwebb) April 27, 2017

Tim Prepare dinner first confessed his firm was engaged on self-driving expertise final June, saying on the time:

It’s most likely probably the most tough AI initiatives to work on. Autonomy is one thing that’s extremely thrilling for us and we’ll see the place it takes us.

The corporate is the proverbial turtle within the race for autonomous automobile AI. 27 vehicles don’t appear to be a lot subsequent to the 24,000 vehicles Uber is shopping for from Volvo, or Waymo’s 600 minivans unfold over six cities.

Whereas Apple’s mysterious Challenge Titan, which began a number of years in the past, was supposedly engaged on a self-driving automotive, nothing ever materialized. In response to the New York Instances, the Challenge was dogged by disagreements over whether or not or not the corporate ought to make a fully- or semi-autonomous automotive.

Nonetheless, the corporate has made some strides, together with a breakthrough with object detection it revealed final November. It’s additionally testing short-haul self-driving shuttles on its California campuses.