Compilation / Ma Xiaolei
Editor/ Zhang Linyu
Design / Zhao Haoran
Source/ Bloomberg, Juheng Network Author: Mark Gurman, Keith Naughton
The Apple Car is Apple's "next big thing," but the project has suffered multiple strategic shifts and personnel changes since its launch seven years ago.
Mobility has been particularly severe over the past year. Since Tesla's former doug Field managed the project team, almost all members have changed, including key managers in charge of hardware engineering, robotics and sensors.
Field also jumped to Ford last year, and some senior engineers left to join the flying taxi startup. In March this year, the news of Apple's dissolution of the car team came out frequently.
Bloomberg reported on May 3 that in order to speed up the process of electric vehicle work, Apple's auto team poached a 31-year-old executive from Ford.
Desi Ukašević was named to Automotive News' 100 Women of excellence in the North American automotive industry in 2010 and 2015
The executive, Desi Ujkashevic, has been with Ford since 1991 and was for Ford's director of global automotive safety engineering.
Her LinkedIn profile shows that she was responsible for the interior, exterior, chassis and electronic components of many of Ford's models. He has worked on Escape, Explorer, Fiesta, Focus, and lincoln MKC and Aviator.
In addition, she was involved in the development of Ford's new electric vehicles. The point is that she has extensive experience dealing with regulatory issues, which is key to Apple Car's hit the road, as the project has been plagued by regulatory issues. Ukasevich could help Apple overcome the regulatory hurdles of testing self-driving prototypes on public roads.
Hiring Ukashevich shows that Apple continues to push for self-driving cars and has once again ramped up its development efforts. The mysterious car project of Apple Car still exists, and it has not died.
Also on May 3, Taiwan media giants learned from whistleblowers that Apple will establish partnerships with Toyota, Lexus, Hyundai and Kia, and is likely to entrust long-term foundry partners Hon Hai to assemble Apple Cars.
In addition, according to industry sources, Apple does not plan to launch affordable electric vehicles, and plans to position Apple Car in the high-end electric vehicle market priced at more than $100,000 to compete with Tesla's Model S.
The car will use high-performance metal materials such as titanium and transform the iPhone into a car key. At present, Apple's Car Key function is already available for some models of BMW, Genises and Kia.
Since the Titan Project was launched, both Apple and Ford have poached each other's executive talent pools. Apple declined to comment on the personnel change. Meanwhile, Ford said Ukasevic had retired from the company.
After Field resigned last year, Apple appointed Kevin Lynch, head of watch and health software, to lead the automotive project. Lynch is a highly acclaimed software engineering manager, but he hasn't been in charge of vehicle development before. Still, the company is trying to accelerate the project under Lynch's leadership, with the goal of releasing the product by 2025.
An Apple Car will put Apple on the same stage as new entrants like Tesla and Lucid plus traditional automakers. As part of the project, Apple is also trying to master self-driving technology, which is a "must-kill" in the automotive industry, and technology companies such as Alphabet's Waymo have also been working on this.
Apple has been hoping to make products that are fully autonomous and eliminate the traditional steering wheel and pedals. The company is also trying to make a breakthrough in vehicle safety, and to that end, Apple hopes to develop stronger safeguards than Tesla and Waymo.
This requires the establishment of a large number of multi-layered backup systems to avoid failure of the safety and driving system. Apple hired Jaime Waydo, an old Waymo employee, as head of auto safety in 2018, but he also left last year.
Apple tests self-driving technology on a Lexus
In addition to Ukašević, there are not many senior executives from the automotive industry in the Apple Car team.
Stuart Bowers, a former Tesla executive working on self-driving software, and Jonathan Sive, a former manager for Tesla, Waymo and BMW, have all joined the Apple team.
Last year, Apple hired Ulrich Kranz, a former BMW executive and former head of self-driving startup Canoo.
At Ford, Ukashevich was one of the company's most recognizable managers. "Desi has extensive experience as a global automotive industry leader." The profile about her on The Ford website reads. "She has improved the products, quality and customer experience of the 118-year-old company," the company said. ”
This article was originally produced by Automotive Business Review
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