Apple appears to have hired yet another former Tesla engineer to join its ever growing automated car team. First noticed by Reuters, Apple has hired Jamie Carlson to likely join its car team. Carlson’s LinkedIn profile reflects that he has left Tesla and joined Apple, although his role at Apple is simply listed as a a member of a special projects group.
While at Tesla, Carlson worked on its Autopilot self-driving program. Prior to his stint at Tesla, he worked on automotive vision systems for Gentex Corp.
Reuters also notes that Apple has recently added six other members to its self driving car team, including Megan McClain, a former Volkswagen engineer working in automated driving, as well as Vinay Palakkode, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher. Other hires include Xianqiao Tong, previously at Nvidia, and Paul Frugal, previously deputy director of the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Earlier this summer, Apple hired Doug Betts, who previously led global quality control at Fiat Chysler.
Earlier this year, the it was reported that Tim Cook approved Apple’s electric car project back in 2014 and has put “hundreds” of employees to the project’s team. Other previously reported hires include president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development Johann Jungwirth. We broke down some of the notable members of Apple’s car team here, as well.
Tesla and Apple have long been involved in what many have called a “poaching war” when it comes to self-driving cars. Although, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed out that his company has poached 5 times as many employees from Apple as Apple has from Tesla. Musk also commented that he “hopes” Apple will enter the car market.
Most recently, it was reported that Apple is currently looking for secret car test tracks for its vehicle, with the project moving forward quicker than initially expected. Apple is said to have expressed interest in working with BMW, but those talks reportedly stalled.
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This will be interesting to see where Apple is going with their secret project. Could it be a car, will it be 10 years out? They need to heed some of the lessons from Tesla along the way as well. The established automotive world doesn’t like outsiders and as shown already they will block anyone who tries to sell direct and that has been Apple’s strength all along. I personally would prefer to deal with an Apple dealership rather than a dealer who is focused on lining their pockets for providing less than what Apple would directly.