Pulling Back the Curtain on Apple's Self-Driving Car Project

When Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) revealed to the world that it was working on its own autonomous car, speculation ran rampant about what it could mean. As it turns out, Apple's own research and development team had tons of ideas, too -- so much so that the effort became unfocused and overwhelming. That led to last year's reorganization of the project to create autonomous software systems rather than a full-fledged vehicle.

While that means we won't be seeing the iCar anytime soon, I wouldn't count out seeing one ever. It seems as though building the autonomous sensors and software -- which Apple calls CarOS -- is the most important first step. Once that is in place, the company could proceed to make a car, or with mountains of cash, buy an automaker to help. A recent article in The New York Times shed light on engineers' early ideas of what the future iCar might look like.

Here are some of the features Apple engineers initially contemplated:

Source: Fool.com