Bloomberg: Apple Car continues to lose key managers, but Apple still hiring

Apple Car Toyota Mashup
Apple Car Toyota Mashup (Image credit: Lease Fetcher)

What you need to know

  • Apple has reportedly lost multiple "top managers" in recent months.
  • The project continues to add "notable names," however.

The never-ending Apple Car project has reportedly lost a number of top managers in recent months, although Apple does seem to be replacing them.

A new Bloomberg report says that at least three people have left the company in the last year, with one having left in the last few days.

The iPhone maker has hundreds of engineers working on underlying self-driving car technology as well as groups of employees working on an actual vehicle, Bloomberg News has reported. Running the division is Doug Field, a former top vehicle engineer for Tesla Inc., along with a management team of fewer than a dozen executives. At least three members of that Apple car management team have departed this year.

The recent loss was Dave Scott – someone who previously worked on robotics related to the Apple Car project.

In recent days, Dave Scott, who led teams working on robotics related to the car, left to become the chief executive officer at Hyperfine, a health care company developing next-generation MRI systems. Before Scott's departure, Jaime Waydo, who led autonomous car safety and regulation teams, departed to become the chief technology officer at Cavnue, a startup focused on the safety of autonomous cars on public roads.

The good news is that Apple continues to make new hires, suggesting that the project is far from dead and buried. It still doesn't give us any indication when we can expect Apple Car to actually ship, though.

Despite the recent departures, Apple has added notable names to the car team over the past few years, including former top Tesla executives in charge of drive systems and manufacturing engineering, car interiors and exteriors and self-driving software. The team also includes other car industry veterans and executives who have developed key Apple products.

One thing that's already shipped is the new M1 iMac. Be sure to check our list of the best iMac deals and grab one for yourself.

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.