San Francisco May 15 (IANS) With 55 self-driving cars and 83 drivers Apple now has the second highest number of self-driving cars in the US state of California where autonomous vehicles are being tested.
The Cupertino-based tech giant had 45 self-driving cars until late March.
"Apple has the second highest number of self-driving cars after General Motor s Cruise which has 104 vehicles as of now " MacReports reported late on Monday.
"Apple grew from 3 to 45 between April 2017 and March 2018 and now this number has increased to 55 " the report added.
Behind Apple is Alphabet s Waymo which currently has 51 self-driving vehicles and Elon Musk-owned Tesla which has 39 cars.
Currently the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has provided permits to 53 companies for self-driving cars that include safety drivers resulting in a total of 409 vehicles and 1 573 safety drivers in the US.
As of now the DMV has not issued any permits for complete driverless testing because for that to happen companies must have to have a pre-testing of the vehicles in controlled conditions.
"The DMV is currently reviewing two driverless testing permit applications " a DMV spokesperson reportedly told TechCrunch.
Code-named "Project Titan" Apple s self-driving programme s fleet is reportedly made up of Lexus RX450h SUVs each of which is fitted with huge racks of LIDAR and radar sensors as well as cameras.

--IANS rp/na/vm