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Holy Shit. I would have guessed 400 or so, following the news a couple years ago of Project Titan shuttering plans to manufacture their own vehicle and focus ju

Holy Shit. I would have guessed 400 or so, following the news a couple years ago of Project Titan shuttering plans to manufacture their own vehicle and focus just on autonomy. I'm not exactly sure how one would keep 5,000 people busy. They've only got 50-something vehicles actively testing on California's roads, thought they could very well have more somewhere else. It's hard to figure out how many people Waymo currently employs, but but they had around 600 in 2015. I also know they subcontract out remote guidance, data annotation, and map-making to third parties. But 5000? Wow. They must still be serious about making their own car. wow.

King-Aaron 8y ago
Consider the scale of an automotive manufacturer - General Motors has a technical centre that can house over 21,000 employees [1] which goes to show the scale of people involved in vehicle R&D. For a company that's effectively just dipping it's toes into the industry, 5,000 is understandable 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Cente...
- Fricken 8y ago
  For sure. It's just that I was previously under the assumption Apple had opted not to manufacture a vehicle. So little information gets outside the walls of Apple's forbidden palace. I follow the self driving car race pretty close, and with Apple there are just so many question marks as to how serious, and capable they are, and as to what their strategy might be.
MR4D 8y ago
Mapping systems. Imaging systems. Automation systems. Safety systems. Communication systems. Energy management. Suspension. Energy systems (electrical I presume). And that doesn’t include all the manufacturing process people that Apple would throw at a problem of any scale, let alone cars. So yeah, there could be a tons of people, but like most Apple things, very, very few would have access to anything more than a small slice of what is going on.

King-Aaron 8y ago

Consider the scale of an automotive manufacturer - General Motors has a technical centre that can house over 21,000 employees [1] which goes to show the scale of people involved in vehicle R&D. For a company that's effectively just dipping it's toes into the industry, 5,000 is understandable 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Cente...

Fricken 8y ago
For sure. It's just that I was previously under the assumption Apple had opted not to manufacture a vehicle. So little information gets outside the walls of Apple's forbidden palace. I follow the self driving car race pretty close, and with Apple there are just so many question marks as to how serious, and capable they are, and as to what their strategy might be.

MR4D 8y ago

Mapping systems. Imaging systems. Automation systems. Safety systems. Communication systems. Energy management. Suspension. Energy systems (electrical I presume). And that doesn’t include all the manufacturing process people that Apple would throw at a problem of any scale, let alone cars. So yeah, there could be a tons of people, but like most Apple things, very, very few would have access to anything more than a small slice of what is going on.