VW, Apple Partner on Autonomous Vehicle Project

Apple Inc. has signed a deal with Volkswagen AG to convert VW T6 Transporter vans into self-driving electric shuttles to move employees between two of its Silicon Valley campuses, The New York Times reports.

The deal, not reported until now, was signed late last year. Sources tell the Times that the project—code-named Jetstream—is retrofitting T6 vans at VW’s Italdesign subsidiary in Turin, Italy. They say Apple is supplying the interior, sensors, control computers and propulsion batteries.

The newspaper’s sources say the project is behind schedule and won’t meet its original goal of delivering the finished shuttles by the end of this year.

The Times says the VW deal caps Apple’s frequently shifting plans to jump into the emerging autonomous vehicle market. The company originally planned to create a revolutionary self-driving electric vehicle that would have an impact akin to the iPhone. The project, launched in 2014, was dubbed Titan.

But the report says Apple soon stumbled over the challenges of designing the basic parts of a vehicle. Plans to create and produce the car in-house morphed into a search for a contract assembler, then a partner who could provide the basic running gear, and finally a carmaker willing to retrofit one of its own vehicles with an Apple-supplied interior and autonomous-driving control system.

The Times says Apple had hoped to partner with BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Apple also met with Lexus, Nissan, BYD and McLaren. But all those talks collapsed over the carmakers’ unwillingness to cede the car’s data and user experience to Apple.

The deal with VW appears to be relatively small and narrowly focused. The Times says it isn’t clear whether VW and Apple would continue a partnership beyond the shuttle van project.