Apple Car Project Loses Three Key Engineers

As Apple gears up to release a fully autonomous vehicle, it is continuing to lose key people who are working on the project, reports Bloomberg. Over the last several weeks, three engineers have departed the company.

Apple car wheel icon feature yellow
Apple's chief engineer for radar systems, Eric Rogers, left for Joby Aviation, a company working on electric aerial ridesharing. Alex Clarabut, an engineering manager for the battery team, and Stephen Spiteri, a hardware engineering manager, both joined Archer Aviation, a company that is developing an air taxi.

Earlier this month, Apple Car engineering director Michael Schwekutsch left Apple for Archer Aviation as well, and back in September, Apple Car project lead Doug Field left Apple for Ford after three years of heading up Apple Car development.

According to Bloomberg, Apple has lost six members of the project's management team in 2021 alone, but it has also brought on important new hires like Ulrich Kranz, former CEO of self-driving startup Canoo, and CJ Moore, who worked at Tesla and has expertise in self-driving software.

Apple's work on an autonomous vehicle has been plagued by managerial shifts, changes in focus, and hiring issues almost since it began. With Field's departure, Apple brought on Apple Watch chief Kevin Lynch to work on the Apple Car, and he is working alongside AI chief John Giannandrea.

Under Lynch's leadership, the Apple Car project is moving forward with the ambitious aim of producing an autonomous electric vehicle that does not require human intervention, which no other car manufacturer has been able to achieve.

Apple is hoping to release a self-driving car by 2025, but the timeline may ultimately prove to be too aggressive.

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Top Rated Comments

a m u n Avatar
45 months ago
Can’t believe they need three people to make a key for a car. o_O
Score: 34 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AppliedVisual Avatar
45 months ago
These stupid headlines and articles about engineers leaving Apple (or most any other company) are kinda pointless and are just garbage analytics. Several of these popping up about chip designers and engineers leaving before the first Apple Silicon chips launched and then again before the new MacBook Pros. And yet here we are, Apple's M1 series chips, especially M1 Pro and Max, are absolutely phenomenal. Not enough credit being given to all the engineers who are still onboard working on such things.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
citysnaps Avatar
45 months ago
OMG... three engineers left a huge tech company in Silicon Valley.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
madman365 Avatar
45 months ago
SO, is there any info WHY!? Is the project not working? Not good? Is it internal difficulty working in Apple? The why? I love this site. But so many times the stories are.... "A bomb went off", but no where, why, and what the actual fallout may be. Just sayin'. Three people leaving a company is not news. The WHY is the news.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AppliedVisual Avatar
45 months ago

High profile engineers only leave over treatment, culture, internal disputes, project pending cancelation, or project is "dead in the water" but alive on paper.
Or they leave due to a multitude of other reasons, both personal and professional, that you did not list. This news is not news. In fact it's probably a subtle smear from a short sell position since Apple stock has been kicking butt this week. Remember, Apple's "top chip designer" left the company, as the headlines said, several months before the first Apple Silicon products launched and people were freaking out. It caused a momentary slump in stock price. Then look what happened. File this one under NBGAF.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
-BigMac- Avatar
45 months ago
Such a rollercoaster of headlines for this Apple Car over the years.
Yes, no, yes, delayed, no, definitely no, maybe, confirmed yes...

Just hope it happens, one day :D
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)