Before putting the plan to build a self-driving car on the back burner, Apple spent billions of dollars and filed dozens of patents.
The thing is, Apple is constantly filing patents and trademarks, for all kinds of projects and products.
But for one very good reason, the company’s latest patent has people asking questions.
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The sheer number of car-related patents Apple filed over the course of the last ten years is one of two main reasons why the Apple car was an open secret.
The other one is the fact that Apple kept hiring thousands of engineers for the car project.
After all, it is ‘kinda hard to hide something when you hire a thousand engineers to do it,’ in the words of Elon Musk.
Apple decided to scrap the project because the company believed building a car would take even more time and billions, and it would be difficult to make it profitable.
This is the reason why one of the latest patents is a bit… confusing.
The tech giant recently filed a patent for an innovative augmented reality (AR) windshield.
This suggests that Apple may have scrapped its plan to build a car, but maybe the company hasn’t given up on the automotive industry just yet.
The new patented windshield uses a combination of sensors, radars, light and infrared cameras to create a three-dimensional representation of the external world visible to the driver.
This technology would overlay digital elements onto the physical world, giving the driver a Pokémon Go-style view in front of them.
After scrapping the car idea, Apple reportedly diverted funds, and people, to AI-related projects.
Having said that, we should also point out that several tech companies, including Huawei, Xiaomi and Sony, are already involved with cars.
Maybe the Cupertino tech giant is still trying to get a piece of that particular pie.
Some of the images used for this story were generated using AI
