If Apple acquires a permit it will be required to disclose a good amount of information about its cars.

The rumour of Apple’s self-driving vehicle has just had some serious weight added to its authenticity after executives reportedly met with California autonomous driving officials.

A team led by senior legal counsel at Apple Mike Maletic had an hour-long meeting with the department’s self-driving auto experts on August 17.

Cook dodged Colbert’s question about self-driving cars.

The document shows that hourlong meeting took place August . 17 between Malefic and DMV deputy director Bernard Soriano and his co-sponsor on California’s autonomous vehicle regulation project, Stephanie Dougherty, who is chief of strategic planning. A draft of these guidelines was meant to be due at the beginning of 2015, but is running behind schedule. Many carmakers and automotive technology companies, including Volkswagen-Audi, General Motors, Nissan, Continental and Google, have been closely involved in the process, as California is widely expected to influence national rules in the future. The most recent, Honda and BMW, received their permits last week. Vehicle manufacturers have to report the make, model, and VIN of the cars they want to test, reveal details of about its autonomous system, and identify the drivers. Apple will also have to report any accident or automation malfunction to the department within ten days of the incident. A tour of the facility by Apple was postponed in late May, with Jack Hall of GoMentum’s autonomous vehicle programme writing to Fearon: “We would still like to meet in order to keep everything moving and to meet your testing schedule”. Officially however the report later admits that “the Apple meeting was to review [the] DMV’s autonomous vehicle regulations“, which is a far cry from the hyperbole of stretching that to meaning Apple discussed autonomous vehicle plans.

All the same, while the Guardian speculates that the meeting – along with the fact that Apple recently installed an engineering project manager to Project Titan – indicates the company’s vehicle could be “almost ready for public view”, such a timeline is still ambiguous. On the other hand, the development of Project Titan is rumored to be happening in a complex in Sunnyvale, codenamed SG05.