Apple poaches Tesla's VP of vehicle engineering - which could have implications for the Apple Car (AAPL, TSLA)
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Apple has reportedly poached a top Tesla execute, Chris Porritt, Tesla’s former VP of engineering, according to Fortune. Porritt will likely join Apple’s secretive car project, dubbed Project Titan.
Prior to working at Tesla, Porritt was Aston Martin’s chief engineer and was also a principal engineer at Land Rover.
Apple has never publicly acknowledged that it is developing a car, but the existence of Project Titan is an open secret among tech companies and automakers. Apple has hired hundreds of automotive engineers to work on the project, many of whom previously worked at Tesla. Reports surfaced last year that Apple had been poaching so many engineers from Tesla that it was slowing down Tesla’s production.
Porritt said last year that he met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk “three to four times per week,” so he brings with him a great deal of knowledge about Tesla’s business model, production processes and supply lines, and future plans. Given that Apple is expected to make an electric, connected vehicle, just as Tesla has, that knowledge could be just as valuable to Apple as Porritt’s engineering expertise.
Apple’s car project lost its leader, Steve Zadesky, a former Ford engineer, earlier this year. It also was hit with a hiring freeze after an unfavorable review by Jony Ive, Apple’s design chief, found a lack of progress at the project, Apple Insider reported. The hiring of Porritt seems like an effort to reset the car project and make progress towards its goal of developing a car by 2019.
Self-driving cars are poised to hit the market in a big way, so it's no surprise that Apple would want to get a piece of the action.
John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on self-driving cars that examines the major strides automakers and tech companies have made to overcome the barriers currently preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the market. Further, the report examines global survey results showing where fully autonomous cars are highly desired.
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- Three barriers have been preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the road: 1) high technological component prices; 2) varying degrees of consumer trust in the technology; and 3) relatively nonexistent regulations. Howev
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- Consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicle technology has increased in the past two years.
- California became the first US state to propose regulations. California's regulations stipulate that a fully autonomous car must have a driver behind the wheel at all times, discouraging Google's and Uber's idea of a driverless taxi system.
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