In 2021, lots of information has been circulating about Apple’s car project. Among the hottest was when it was reported in January and February that Apple was very close to linking up with Hyundai/Kia as the chosen manufacturer of its car, although those negotiations later collapsed, offering a salutary lesson in how difficult Apple is to work with.
But Apple hasn’t just been changing its mind about which manufacturer it wants to work with. It’s also had time to heavily reshuffle the management of its car project, according to information from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman.
Gurman claims that three “top members of the group” have left during this year, namely Benjamin Lyon, Jaime Waydo and Dave Scott, who worked in engineering, safety systems and robotics respectively.
There has been some stability at the very top of the project: Doug Field, who previously developed the Model 3 at Tesla, will still lead the car group within Apple.
And of course the departing members of the team have been replaced by new faces. This year, for instance, BMW veteran Ulrich Kranz joined the car group. But many other people have been hired or promoted in 2021:
- Hanns Tappeiner, co-founder of the robot toy company Anki.
- Tim Cheng, former head of the car operating system at Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup that Apple bought two years ago.
- Hans Lee, formerly of Freedom Robotics where he worked with software to control fleets of robots.
- Martin Levihn, who is now responsible for AI-based decision-making for self-driving cars.
- Paul Costa, a longtime Apple veteran who now works as a hardware developer in Apple’s car project.
You can keep up with the latest developments and rumours in our Apple Car news hub.
This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation by David Price.