Apple’s eagerly anticipated “Project Titan” self-driving car project has reportedly developed into a self-driving shuttle bus — called Palo Alto Infinite Loop (PAIL) — designed to ferry its employees between buildings.

The project may serve as a test bed for Apple’s autonomous car research, although a customer-focused vehicle built by Apple is for now out of the question. Instead, Apple’s self-driving technology will likely eventually be used by other carmakers.

The report comes from the New York Times which sheds a bit of light on the progress of Apple’s Project Titan.

Confused direction

Interestingly, the newspaper claims that a clash at the center of the project was between Steve Zadesky, an Apple executive who was initially in charge of Titan, who wanted to build semiautonomous technology, while Jony Ive, “believed that a fully driverless car would allow the company to reimagine the automobile experience.”

Among the ideas Apple reportedly investigated included motorized doors that opened and closed silently, augmented reality displays for the interior of the car, new ways of incorporating the light sensor essential to driverless cars, and no steering wheel or gas pedals. Apple also investigated the possibility of using spherical globe-like wheels for the vehicle, “because spherical wheels could allow the car better lateral movement.”

The project allegedly ran into problems — claim five people with knowledge of the project — on account of Apple’s lack of clearly defined vision and arbitrary or unrealistic deadline.

There’s no word on when Apple will roll out any technology it’s working on in this department, but this certainly sounds like one of the most intriguing R&D projects Apple has been working on in the past few years. It’s no wonder the company’s R&D budget is so high right now, even if we may not get to see the results any time soon.