Apple camera car on San Francisco streets leads to 'street view' speculation

A car leased to Apple and covered in cameras and scanning equipment has been spotted driving around San Francisco.

The people carrier with system of 12 cameras and a lidar sensor, which scans the environment using a spinning laser, attached to its roof was spotted by a Bay Area local blog called Claycord news and talk.

The unmarked vehicle was confirmed as having been leased to Apple via its number plate, and it could indicate that the company is preparing a large update to its maps app for the iPhone and iPad, similar to the street-level photography within Google Maps.

Apple’s update to its operating system for the iPhone and iPad, iOS 9, is expected to debut in the summer and could introduce the new feature. That would require a significant investment from Apple and a fleet of cars to photograph and map roads.


A similar car to the one spotted in San Francisco was also captured on video in New York last year.

Google’s Street View was introduced in 2006 across five major US cities before expanding to the rest of the UK and Europe in 2008. It marked the switch for Google from relying on other providers for maps to building its own.

Apple has invested heavily in its maps app and made it the default mapping application on the company’s smartphones and tablets.


Apple Maps was notoriously buggy with inaccurate data on its launch in 2012, prompting the chief executive Tim Cook to publicly apologise for user frustration stating that the company was “doing everything we can to make Maps better”.

Street View was a crucial step in improving the accuracy of Google Maps as part of the company’s “Ground Truth” project, adding context such as no access roads, traffic signs and the context not available from satellite or aerial photography.

Tracking the cars route with GPS and other sensors not associated with photography verified routes and brought local knowledge to the standard map.


A similar project from Apple could boost the accuracy of its map application and bring it up to par with competitors from Google and Nokia’s Here maps.