Apple hires veteran Lamborghini executive for the Apple Car project, reportedly
The 20-year veteran Luigi Taraborrelli will reportedly help lead the design of the long-rumored Apple Car. Luckily for those of us who are excited about the self-driving vehicle by Cupertino, this hire means that Apple has not abandoned the Car project (frequent reports of people leaving the project may lead to speculation that the project isn’t going all that well). Taraborrelli was overseeing chassis and vehicle dynamics at Lamborghini. He worked on models such as the Urus, Huracan, and Aventador. He also worked on Huracan Sterrato (an off-road vehicle) and the Asterion concept car, and will now bring his expertise to the Apple Car team.
Taraborrelli’s work was centered mainly on chassis development, but he also worked in other areas of car development, including handling, suspensions, steering, brakes, and rims. Bloomberg got this information from unnamed sources which stated that info wasn’t public (true that, the Apple Car has not been announced by Apple or anything, and neither has an official release or announcement date been given).
The Apple Car project is known under the codename Project Titan. Despite the quite epic-sounding codename, the project has seen some setbacks and challenges, marked by somewhat high turnover, with many engineers leaving and new ones starting… however, the project seems to not have lost its steam, an impression that the latest hire gives.
The Apple Car project seems to be going strong
The Apple Car project seems to rock a pretty solid human resource. A 31-year veteran of Ford was hired earlier this year to ensure vehicle-safety standards for the car. Last year, Apple hired Ulrich Kranz, former chief of electric-car maker Canoo and former leader of BMW’s electric car business.
But that’s not all! Apple also managed to take former Tesla autopilot chief Stuart Bowers, and he is reportedly working on self-driving technology for the Apple Car. It seems that hundreds of former Tesla engineers are now on board with the Apple Car, as well as engineers from Waymo and Mercedes-Benz. Senior design executives from Tesla, McLaren, Porsche, and Aston Martin are also reportedly working on the car.
Judging by rumors (via Bloomberg), Apple is set on accelerating the project so that it can introduce a car around 2025. The car would reportedly have a design that lets passengers face each other like they are riding in a fancy limousine. Additionally, rumors have previously indicated that Apple wants to create a car without a steering wheel or pedals, meaning it would rely on fully autonomous technology (well, this move is doubted by some, so take this with a grain of salt).
But Apple has also lost employees from the Car project, as we briefly mentioned above. Among them is Doug Field, who was the head of the project, as well as AI specialist Ian Goodfellow. The former left to join Ford after working for three years at Apple.
The project is currently run by Kevin Lynch (he is also overseeing the Apple Watch and health software teams), and John Giannandrea (Apple’s head of machine learning).
Since 2014, Apple has been working on the Apple Car but because of turnover and other challenges such as change of strategy, it seems that it will be more than ten years after it started that we could see the Apple Car. When we know more, we’ll make sure to inform you, but for now, it seems we have a bit more left to wait before the Apple Car becomes reality.
