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Rumors of Apple Self-Driving Car Reignite after Secret Discussion with Test Facility
Will an Apple Car enter production soon? The Guardian says yes, but others are skeptical. It may have begun testing at a secret location in Concord, CA.
Apple CarPlay [Source: Apple]
Rumors of a self-driving electric car by Apple are becoming more real these days, especially after the latest document obtained by The Guardian giving signs that Apple has made arrangements with GoMentum Station, a secure and gated facility with 20 miles of paved roads, bridges and underpasses, to utilize their space.
The former World War II naval base is located 40 miles north of Silicon Valley and guarded by the military, making it, officials claim, “the largest secure test facility in the world” for the “testing, validation, and commercialization of connected vehicle (CV) applications and autonomous vehicles (AV) technologies …” Mercedes-Benz and Honda have already carried out experiments with self-driving cars behind its barbed wire fences.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information request filed by The Guardian, we know that in May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, after Apple engineer Frank Fearon wrote to the facility, saying, “We would … like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it].”
“We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Apple,” says Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, owner of GoMentum Station. He says, “We can’t tell you anything other than they’ve come in and they’re interested. There’s not a lot of vacant space in the Valley if you want to do testing in a secure location. We’re close enough that companies can bring their vehicles north, store them in the Concord area and bring their software and hardware engineers up.”
Apple calls its car making venture Project Titan. The Guardian says it is housed in a nondescript building in Sunnyvale, California, about 4 miles from Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino. The building was leased in 2014 and subsequently modified by Apple to include several labs and workshop spaces, as well as beefed-up security and access card readers, according to information filed in city permits.
In May, Apple senior vice-president Jeff Williams called a car “the ultimate mobile device” and said that Apple was “exploring a lot of different markets [in which] we think we can make a huge amount of difference”.
The Guardian story appeared on August 14. The next day, the editors of The Verge pooh poohed it, saying, “We still don’t have the smoking gun there will be an actual Apple-branded car on the streets that you and I can buy directly from Apple, just as you would a Tesla. There are a number of other possibilities that are still in the running — Apple could want to build a car platform, for instance, just as Google seems to be doing, without making or selling cars itself. Or it could be developing technologies that it can license and sell to existing automakers.”
Skepticism from The Verge centers on the fact that it normally takes 5 years for an established car company to bring an entirely new car to market. It thinks for a company like Apple, which has never built a car before, the time could be a lot longer.
Rumors about an Apple Car only began to surface a year or so ago and consist mostly of reports that Apple is busy recruiting engineers from Tesla and the former A123 battery company. The Verge thinks that if Apple is working on building a car, it will be 2020 at the earliest before it goes into production.
>>>>> MUST SEE: [VIDEO] Hilarious ‘Apple Car’ Parody
Google, Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and several other car makers have been issued permits by the California department of motor vehicles to test self-driving cars on the state’s public roads. But that process requires disclosing technical and commercial details, something that the notoriously secretive Apple might not want.
Tesla apparently wanted key personnel to tour GoMentum Station in April, but armed soldiers at the base refused entry to foreign born workers and a manager who would not divulge his social security number. “At this point, I’ll retract our interest in this test site until the process is worked out,” the manager said in an email to GoMentum Station’s Jack Hall, according to The Guardian.
No company on Earth is as secretive about its future plans as Apple. The only thing we know for sure about the supposed Apple Car is that we don’t know very much about it at all.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla is starting to prepare for the launch of the Optimus robot in its smartphone app, new coding strings show. Elon Musk has referred to Optimus as what will be the greatest-selling product of any kind of all time, and now, Tesla is getting ready for its launch.
Tesla’s smartphone app had several first-time mentions of the Optimus program, according to Tesla App Updates, who intially reported on the appearance. Here’s what they found:
A Dedicated “Robot” Phone Key Authentication
Tesla is working on a Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, authentication that is specifically for robots. This does not only apply to Optimus, though, as Robotaxi, which is Tesla’s autonomous ride-hailing platform, might also identify vehicles within the fleet as robots as well.
Tesla shows rapid teardown of Model S and X lines, paving the way for Optimus at Fremont
Essentially, pairing your phone as a key to anything Tesla identifies as a robot to a “whitelist” of authorized devices. Optimus, Robotaxi, or other products that fall into this category will only respond if the device trying to communicate with it is authorized.
This is a great security feature that will eliminate at least face-value and low-level threats.
Home Data Collection and System Alerts
This appears to be somewhat of a neural network for Optimus within your house. There will be a dedicated screen that asks for consent to collect both video and spatial data while Optimus performs in-home tasks. Everything from vacuuming, washing dishes, dusting, and other activities will be tracked.
There will also be a comprehensive alert system that will track everything from low battery to mechanical issues.
Other Changes
Most of the changes tracked in this particular app update are related to Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, and include things such as image assets for new features, a preview of the new custom wraps feature, and other unique features.
You can check out our coverage on what is included with the 2026 Summer Update here:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
