According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the Apple veteran employee who has been overseeing the company’s “Project Titan” electric car initiative is leaving the company. The report, citing “people familiar with the matter,” says Steve Zadesky, who has been with Apple for 16 years, is leaving the company for “personal reasons.”
The timing for Zadesky’s departure is unknown at this point, as are his specific reasons for leaving, although the report makes it clear that it was for “personal reasons and wasn’t related to his performance.” In 2014, he was given permission to start investigating a possible foray into the electric car market for Apple, having previously worked on both the iPhone and iPod during his tenure.
Prior to his time at Apple, Zadesky was an engineer at Ford. At Apple, he was asked to triple the size of the automotive team, which stood at around 600 employees in September, as well as to come up with a vision for the product. The car team at Apple, the report claims, has had issues coming up with clear goals for the product. The team has reportedly felt that the goals set by Apple are not attainable, but the company has urged the team to push ahead and try to meet them. It is said that Apple set a ship date for 2019 for Project Titan.
Apple has yet to publicly akowledge that it is developing a car, although it has made a handful of hires and acquisitions centered around automotive technology. Many of the hires have been former Tesla employees, creating a so-called “poaching war” between the two companies. We broke down a handful of the experts Apple has hired to build an electric car last year. Earlier this month, it was revealed that Apple has registered three car-related domain names that hint at its electric car project. The company is reportedly testing Project Titan at a secret car test track.
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Gotta love the good ol ‘ “people familiar with the matter”.
The rumored leader of the rumored project is rumored to leave … Very informative indeed .
This seems pretty significant, given that he worked on iPhone and iPod before it. I’m curious as to what this means for not only the car project, but apples future in general.
Curious? It’s simple. Apple is Doomed™ Why do you even ask?
It is to be noticed that recent reports about the Titan Project is only mentioning an electric car, without any reference to it possibly being autonomous. Apple has the position and the money to build an electric car for sure. If Elon Musk can do it, why not Apple? But if it is to be just another electric car, what is Apple bringing to it that will make it really compelling, revolutionary? That, to my opinion, would be autonomous. A truely autonomous car. That would completely change our way at moving around in an automobile. It would completely change the paradigm of having a car that you buy and own for some years, which is either parked idle someplace, or stuck in traffic jams. The rest of the time, when it rides, it’s either to big or to small for your specific needs at the specific time. So? Where is the Apple Electric _Autonomous_ Car?
It will of course be autonomous. That’s the future of vehicles… The entire point of Apple getting into the vehicle market is to produce an autonomous vehicle because that requires a lot of sensors and computing. In 15 years driving will be a hobby, and in 25 years driving will be outlawed (probably sooner, just being generous). My guess is there will be a large number of road courses set up throughout the world where people can go to legally have fun driving around for fun. Autonomous vehicles are so much safer than human drivers. Presently they already help in preventing crashes. In 25 years cars will basically be places where you are entertained or do work while you are driven to wherever you want to go. In 50 years cars will be autonomous drones which fly people at low altitudes wherever they need to go. Accidents will be eliminated, infrastructure repurposed.
For driving to be a “hobby” in 15 years, it means that autonomous vehicles will need to run on the same roads as normal cars. No country on Earth would allow that because even though autonomous vehicles may be safer than normal drivers, therein lies the problem – you can’t account for normal drivers and their mistakes. That means that the whole transport infrastructure will need to be changed so that normal vehicles and autonomous vehicles will run in separate lanes. Who pays for the infrastructure change? The tax payer that’s who. Now what possible incentive would a taxpayer have to start using autonomous vehicles when (a) they would need to scrap the perfectly good vehicle they use and (b) have to pay extra taxes to use it?
Then, ten years later, all perfectly legal vehicles which people have paid good money for are outlawed, sent to the scrapyard to be crushed, and those same people then have to pay a lot of money for a brand new autonomous vehicle, as well as be paying extra taxes to pay for the new roads to use them – all the prevent the carelessness of some idiot drivers. Remember, people have an inherent distrust of automated things, especially things which if they go wrong can put your life in danger.
You are right of course – it IS the future, but genuinely, do you not think 15-25 is slightly optimistic?
Optimistic? Yes, I guess, but look at 25 years ago, there wasn’t even Internet. The changing of everything due to technology is only greatly increasing. Cars have been at a stand-still due to companies choosing not to innovate for profit reasons. Which is why they crushed and buried electric vehicles many years ago in California. The oil and gas industry and others playing only for profit of course. That’s the main problem with captialism, it allows for profit over everything else, safety, innovation, morals, etc. luckily Apple, and Tesla are getting into this and will be and are forcing the hand of the other companies to start innovating.
As for your comments regarding all non-autonomous vehicles going to scrap yards with no money for the owner? God no. They will be recycled and companies will still pay massive money for those materials.
Moreover there will be massive tax breaks coming to people purchasing electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles for both their environmental and safety bonuses.
As for normal and autonomous vehicles sharing the road in different lanes? Of course not! That’s absolutely nonsensical. Autonomous vehicles offer safety whether normal cars are driving around them or not. They will not be separated ever. That would be an enormous waste of money. An autonomous vehicle could break, steer, or deploy airbags before a crash which would all be saving someone in the event that a driver on the opposite side of the road fell asleep and veered into their lane.
To Aunty T : How I see is that nobody, except hobbyists, will own it’s car like we do today. You’ll order the one that you need with your smartphone, for the purpose of your needs at the time and it will self drive where you are within the hour, then self drive to where you need to be, and then self-drive itself to another customer, or back to a recharging station. Just like a cab, but without the cab driver; That unfortunately will cause the disappearance of a whole profession, including truck drivers, as they to will become autonomous. It will be expensive though, but it will only be needed at specific times when public transportations are unpractical. But of course, at the same time, said public transportations will need to be seriously improved, and one can bet that they to will be autonomous and all electrical. This already exists in some form with shared cars. Of course they are not electrical and not autonomous(yet), but it works as an alternative to owning your personal car, especially in congested cities where parking is difficult and traffic is a nightmare.
This will need to completely change the paradigm of owning a personal car. But that will happen when people start to realize that owning a personal automobile is expensive, hazardous and often lethal, damaging for health and nature. Yet for many people, the personal car is more than a mean of transportation, it also is an expression of social status, of wealth and professional success. When people start to realize the vanity of that, and it has already began, the myth of the personal car will simply vanish.
But I agree that 15 years might not be enough for that to happen. But hey, 15 years ago, there was no iPhone. Look where we are today…
If there is one company that can induce such a paradigm shift, it is Apple.
“A car, a computer, a phone… A car, a computer, a phone! These are not 3 separate device, this is one device.” “WTF! You hired me to make a car not a server on wheels, fuck yall, bie.”
After Steve Jobs, Apple returns to be just another Silicon Valley company with a lot of cash but short on vision.
Because the iPad 1 was vision, and Jobs alone was responsible for it?
Maybe he left to spend more time with his family. Maybe he’s a jerk. Maybe he was in favor of one direction, and the other side won. We’ll never know from Apple, and if I was in charge — not that I am or ever would be — I’d clam up at this point of R&D.
Whenever I hear apple car I imagine a car shaped like moving on the road pac man style. If the car really happens I am pretty sure some analyst will make this comparison in his article….apple chomps away in the car market share in a crowded autonomous vehicle market. The graphic accompanying the article will have the apple logo cars, Googles cars with the 2o’s for wheels, made by say Kia, just spread around on the road. And Microsoft cars that are small trucks with drone propellars on one side and air plane wing on the other, wearing a holo lens, with a tail wing that doubles as a dish antenna. It has only 1 control the re(Start) button. Amazon in the mean time has completely skipped the cars and gone on to arial delivery of people by buying uber (or lyft) scaling it’s drone delivery of packages to human transportation. It’s hovercars have the familiar smile logo and they are looking down at all the mess with a smirk.
Consider – YOU have been with Apple for 16 years, for the past 12-13 years you have fully matured and cashed out your apple shares you have received – and these are very likely significant sums of money. You are 75% vested in the shares you got 3 year ago, that underwent a 7:1 split. Very likely, you are a millionaire several times over.
How much job stress will you put up with, now that your kids are at an age that you can do anything you want, with them? They will soon be departing for college and embarking on a life of their own. Which is more important to you – your family or the work you do? Steve Jobs chose his job over his family; not everyone will make this choice.
I am against this entire venture.
This will mark the beginning of the end for Apple.
Adding computer crap to a car does not make it better or safer.
This is as stupid as Apple making washing machines.