The Apple Car team reportedly lost a key manager recently

Taycan Carplay Layout
Taycan Carplay Layout (Image credit: Ted Kritsonis / iMore)

What you need to know

  • Benjamin Lyon has reportedly left the Apple Car team.
  • Lyon has moved on to a role at the satellite startup Astra.

The Apple Car project has reportedly lost a key manager, with Benjamin Lyon leaving the company after having been part of the team since 2014.

According to a Bloomberg report, Lyon has moved on to space and satellite startup Astra.

Lyon reportedly helped form the original Apple Car team, then dubbed Project Titan, way back in 2014 and has been a manager working on the sensors the self-driving card would need.

Benjamin Lyon helped form Apple's original autonomous electric car team in 2014 as its most senior manager working on sensors. He remained on the team through its various reboots over the past several years, and most recently led a self-driving car sensors team reporting directly to Doug Field, Apple's vice president in charge of the car project.

The Apple Car project has gone through various iterations over the years and Lyon has been there from day one. What impact his leaving will have on the project as a whole remains to be seen, but Bloomberg's Mark Gurman seems to be of the opinion that there's a potential for setbacks.

Recent reports have Apple talking to companies like Nissan, Hyundai, and others in an attempt to find a manufacturing partner for Apple Car. After initially saying that it was in talks with Apple, Hyundai has since distanced itself from the project with the company's executives now under investigation over the potential for market manipulation.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.