Apple’s automotive chief is heading to Ford

Ford has employed away Apple’s automotive chief, Doug Field, to turn out to be its chief superior know-how and embedded methods officer. “Field will lead Ford’s efforts to develop the next-gen Blue Oval Intelligence tech stack to deliver smart, connected vehicles and services that improve over time through constant updates,” according to Ford’s press release. He’ll report back to Ford’s president and CEO, Jim Farley.

Field was a VP of particular tasks at Apple, the place he was the de facto head of the corporate’s confused efforts to make an autonomous electrical automotive — generally known as Project Titan. He had a earlier stint at Apple the place he was as soon as the VP of Mac {hardware} engineering, however he left the corporate in 2013 to turn out to be Tesla’s chief car engineer, the place he helped oversee troublesome improvement of the Model 3 sedan. He left Tesla in 2018 and rejoined Apple.

The departure is the most recent shake-up for Apple’s automotive division, which has undergone quite a few shifts over the previous a number of years. Despite beginning the challenge in 2014, work on an autonomous electrical car continues to be in an early stage, Bloomberg reported in January. That strategy is a change from an earlier plan to develop self-driving software program that may be utilized by different carmakers — which itself was a change from attempting to construct a automotive.

“We’re grateful for the contributions Doug has made to Apple and we wish him all the best in this next chapter,” an Apple spokesperson mentioned in a press release to The Verge.

It’s unclear who will take Field’s place, although in June, Apple employed Ulrich Kranz, a former BMW government who labored on the i3 EV and i8 hybrid sports activities automotive, to work below Field. Kranz had just lately stepped down as CEO of Canoo, an EV startup he co-founded that Apple was involved in buying in 2020, as The Verge completely reported earlier this yr. Apple’s automotive efforts have been reportedly moved below the purview of John Giannandrea, the corporate’s SVP of machine studying and AI, in December.

Field joins Ford as the corporate has steadily been constructing out its electrical car efforts, most notably with the Ford F-150 Lightning, an all-electric model of the massively well-liked pickup truck, in addition to an all-electric Mustang. The firm is rallying behind a marketing strategy it calls Ford Plus and intends to create extra vehicles which might be absolutely networked and may be up to date over the air, like Teslas. Ford has additionally mentioned that Google’s Android will energy infotainment methods in “millions” of its vehicles beginning in 2023.