There have been a lot of rumors in the last few weeks about Project Titan, Apple’s electric car program. While reports vary on when Apple may actually deliver a car to market, it’s clear that something is being worked on inside Apple.
Patently Apple noticed two filings, both awarded this week:
The first is about climate control:
In Apple’s patent summary they note that the patent figures presented in their filing provide a vehicle climate control system for controlling climate conditions in various cabin regions of a vehicle cabin, where the climate control system is configured to control one or more vehicle components to change the set of climate conditions associated with one or more cabin regions to approximate a set of optimal comfort conditions.
The climate control system is configured to control various vehicle components to control climate conditions, including window assemblies, sunroof assemblies, etc.
…and the second patent is about self-driving technology:
The patent generally relates to mobile electronic equipment such as equipment in a vehicle and, more particularly, to systems in which a vehicle obtains situational awareness information from wireless transmissions from nearby vehicles and provides alerts to the driver.
I honestly do not know how I feel about all of this. Like David Sparks, I worry about it being a distraction from the company’s core products, but then again, such distractions have led to the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch a whole lot more over the last 20 years.