Apple has both taken the long view of its Project Titan automative effort and settled it in Canada.
Apple apparently has “dozens” of software engineers working out of an office outside of Ottawa, Ontario—just a five minute walk from BlackBerry’s QNX division, which provides automotive software. In fact, about two dozen of Apple’s engineers reportedly came directly from QNX.
The hires include former QNX CEO Dan Dodge and Derrick Keefe, a software engineer with decades of experience under his belt.
While QNX doesn’t currently product autonomous driving software, it is on the company’s list of goals. QNX has already reached a deal with AdasWorks to integrate AdasWorks’ software into QNX’s operating system, which already powers systems like BMW ConnectedDrive, Ford Sync3, Buick Intellilink, and others, in more than 60 million vehicles.
Apple is reportedly using Project Titan to create a platform that would combine features like self-driving software, a heads-up display, and of course Siri. Earlier, Apple was rumored to be creating an entire car, even reportedly seeking to test it at a facility in the Bay Area, much closer to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. But in April, Project Titan came under the management of Bob Mansfield, an Apple executive whose last title was Senior Vice President of Technologies. Now the project may be shifting focus to just the software platform that would run on other makers’ cars—or perhaps that was the idea all along.
As always, stay tuned for additional details as they become available.