In late 2005, DaimlerChrysler sold its proving ground in Wittmann, Arizona, to homebuilder Toll Brothers and its partners for $312 million. Now, that same test facility may be where Apple’s “Project Titan” team is testing the “Apple Car.”
Greg S. Fink for Car and Driver:
After more than a decade of ownership, the commercial real-estate finance company finally unloaded the land, selling it to Route 14 Investment Partners LLC in July 2021 for $125 million. Route 14 Investment Partners was no stranger to the property. Approximately five years earlier, the New York–based iStar had begun leasing the proving ground to the little-known limited-liability company.
Much about Route 14 Investment Partners remains unknown, as there’s minimal public information available about the presumably automotive-related company. However, rumors persist that Route 14 Investment Partners is a company related to Apple’s car project, once — and possibly still — known as “Project Titan.”
Last month we flew to Arizona to visit Route 14 Investment Partners’ proving ground in Wittmann. With little precipitation and lots of sunshine, the sleepy unincorporated desert community, located approximately 35 miles northwest of Phoenix, is conducive to autonomous-vehicle testing…
Based on what we witnessed while staking out the proving ground, we can confirm the presence of self-driving-vehicle technology at Route 14 Investment Partners’ facility. We captured images of a white fourth-generation Lexus RX, sensor stack mounted to its roof, undergoing testing within the fenced-in perimeter of the proving ground.
More telling is the design of the sensor stack, which matches those that Apple has fitted to multiple Lexus RXs photographed in California. Pictures of these vehicles are all over the web, and many include a clear view of each vehicle’s license tag—information we used to pull the vehicle identification number (VIN) for five of the California-registered Lexus SUVs.
We then crosschecked each VIN against those listed within California’s 2022 Autonomous Mileage Reports. (The Golden State requires any autonomous-vehicle developer testing its technology on public roads to file data on system disengagements.) The result? All five VINs correlated with reports submitted by Apple.
MacDailyNews Take: The force is strong with this “rumor.”
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