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		</div><p>Apple has joined the fiercely competitive race to design self-driving cars.</p>
<p>Ending years of speculation, Apple&#8217;s late entry into a crowded field was made official on Friday with the disclosure that the California Department of Motor Vehicles had awarded a permit for the company to start testing its self-driving car technology on public roads in the state.</p>
<p>The permit covers three vehicles &#8211; all 2015 Lexus RX 450h hybrid SUVs &#8211; and six individual drivers.<br />
California law requires people to be in a self-driving car who can take control if something goes wrong.</p>
<p>Apple&#8217;s interest in autonomous vehicle technology has long been clear. The California-based company pointed to a statement that it issued in December.</p>
<p>&#8220;Apple is investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems,&#8221; the company said then.<br />
&#8220;There are many potential applications for these technologies, including the future of transportation.&#8221;<br />
Apple released that statement after Steve Kenner, a former Ford Motor executive who is now Apple&#8217;s director of product integrity, notified federal regulators of the company&#8217;s interest in self-driving cars in a letter.</p>
<p>Like others, Apple believes self-driving cars could ease congestion and save millions of people who die annually in traffic accidents often caused by drunk or distracted motorists.</p>
<p>Self-driving cars could also be a lucrative new market. And Apple has been searching for its next act for a while, one that will take it beyond its mainstay phones, tablets and personal computers.</p>
<p>Although iPhone&#8217;s ongoing popularity has helped Apple remain the world&#8217;s most valuable company, the company has not had a breakthrough product since the 2010 debut of the iPad, currently in the throes of a three-year sales slump.</p>
<p>The dry spell has raised doubts as to whether Apple lost some of its trend-setting magic with the death of co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011. Apple will be vying against 29 other companies that already have California permits to test self-driving cars.</p>
<p>The list includes major automakers, including Ford, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen and Tesla, as well as one of its biggest rivals in technology, Google, whose testing of self-driving cars has been spun off into an affiliate called Waymo.</p>
<p>Since Google began its work on self-driving vehicles eight years ago, Waymo&#8217;s fleet of self-driving cars has logged more than two million miles on the road.</p>
<p>That means Apple has a long way to catch up in self-driving technology, but it has often been a follower in markets that it eventually revolutionised. It was not the first to introduce a digital music player, smartphone, or tablet before its iPod, iPhone and iPad came out.</p>
<p>With 246 billion US dollars (£196 billion) in cash, Apple could also easily afford to buy technology that accelerates its development of self-driving cars. There has been recurring speculation that Apple might eventually acquire Tesla, which has a market value of about 50 billion dollars (£40 billion).</p>
<p>Neither Apple nor Tesla has given any inkling that they are interested in joining forces, though.<br />
Speculation about Apple&#8217;s interest in expanding into automobiles began swirling in 2015 amid media reports that the company had begun secretly working on building its own electric car under the name project &#8220;Titan&#8221;.</p>
<p>Apple never confirmed the existence of Titan, which is now believed to be dead.</p>
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