Tech giant Apple has hired former Tesla senior designer manager Andrew Kim, sparking speculations that Apple will once again attempt to build its own car. The timing of Kim’s hire also seems to coincide with Doug Field’s (former Tesla chief vehicle engineer) return to Apple, although their exact roles in the tech firm remain undisclosed as yet.
Kim’s work, according to his LinkedIn profile, include design contributions of the Model 3, Model S, Model X, Model Y as well as the Roadster V2 and the Semi. Prior to his role in Tesla, Kim spent three and a half years at Microsoft where he developed the Windows 10 user interface and products like HoloLens and the Xbox One S.
The hiring of both Kim and Field certainly raises eyebrows – last year in an interview with Bloomberg, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook said “we’re focusing on autonomous systems. It’s a core technology that we view as very important,” adding that it is “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”
Apple had previously retrofitted three Lexus RX450h SUVs with Logitech G27 steering wheel and pedals for its self-driving car programme. However, initial plans to build its own car was eventually shelved in favour of the shifting of focus towards autonomous technologies.
Apple drastically scaled back Project Titan, which it started in 2014, hoping to make an impact on the automotive market in the same way it did for mobile phones when the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Towards the end of 2015, progress was hindered by infighting for the project’s direction, which ultimately led to the hiatus.
According to The Verge, Cook recently stated that the company’s ambitions are broader than cars, emphasising “autonomous systems” as the mother of all machine learning projects that benefit everything that Apple does. Besides Kim and Field, Apple also reportedly hired scores of ex-Tesla employees throughout the year. So, want to take a guess at what Apple is Cooking?
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Apple is clever, they get intelligent people to run their companies. they source the best brains in town.
Proton on the other hand, their CEOs and BOD of the past always came from other GLCs. The same with DRB, the CEOS and BOD come from other GLC.
So, what improvement is there over time?
Hire Proton designers … Apparently they are just sitting around only deciding where to stick badges …since everything done in China
Just like what P2 “designers” have been doing for 27 years. Oh and designing bumpers & bodykits.
PROTON in the early establishment is for Malaysia to develop people competence in automotive R&D, design, testing and manufacturing. When the company shows minor successful manage by their technical and engineering personnel, than this is the time to make money. They bring the businessman to maximum the profit and later kick-out the “high salary” people that who are work as company technical development.
Actually this is also happen to APPLE, and the funny things is the decision made by Steve Jobs itself which later he got kick-out.
Cars for hobbits.
I would probably not read too much into it as if Apple is making a car. Probably Apple is working on an interface for next generation products for Carplay platform. Perhaps a plug and play HW product for retrofit in any car? (iRadio or AppleRadio??) After all, Mr. Kim looks more like a SW or user interface designer.
will Apple reinvent the wheel as well?
rubber ball rollers to replace those donut rubber tires?
Walau.
Then Huawei nak Huawei EV car? I surely buy Huawei than apple car!
Will there ever be a post on PT where there is no mention of Proton in the comments section? If not then better just change the blog name to Proton Tan…..
Its not PT fault. Its by that P1 hating, Toyota salesman troll that keeps talking bollocks about P1 in every article. PT can block his account but he keeps coming back with different names and copy pasting the same bollocks again and again. All of us just ignore him, really.