Apple Car Projekt-Titan: Takeover of Drive.ai

V Before joining Tesla, Schwekutsch was employed by several car manufacturers, where he was responsible, among other things, for the development of the electric and hybrid drives for the BMW i8 and Porsche 918 Spyder as well as the Fiat 500eV and Volvo XC90. In the field of electromobility, the manager has a lot of specialist knowledge, from which Apple now apparently also wants to benefit. At Apple, Schwekutsch is supposed to work in the “Special Project Group” - an unknown project group which, judging by its name, works on products outside the existing Apple portfolio.

With the hiring of Schwekutsch, that works A new round of guesswork about the development of the electric car known as “Project Titan”. Has the iPhone manufacturer resumed its own car?

Most recently, Apple shrunk its car team. After hundreds of developers were withdrawn from Project Titan in 2016, the tech giant reduced the team by another 200 positions in early 2019. There were both layoffs and internal transfers. Some of the employees affected will probably continue to work on machine learning technologies in the future.

However, speculations about the end of the planned Apple car were not confirmed at this point in time. The group still sees great opportunities and possibilities in autonomous systems, an Apple spokesman said at the time to CNBC. In 2019, Apple wanted to focus on certain key areas, which is why some employees from the project were transferred to other company areas.

Restructuring had already been announced

With the reinstatement of the former Tesla manager Doug Field In August 2018, the restructuring of Project Titan had already been announced. Field worked on the development of Mac products until 2013 and then moved to the electric car manufacturer Tesla, where he became chief engineer. It is therefore conceivable that the renewed conversion in Project Titan was initiated under the leadership of Field.

There has been a lot of speculation about the Apple car project for around four years. Of the formerly over 1,000 developers who were supposed to deal with the Apple Car, several hundred - including high-ranking project managers - left the company at their own request and docked with other electric car startups in 2016. Instead of having your own car, software for autonomous driving should be developed from this point on. With this software, Apple then wanted to become a cooperation partner in the auto industrysearch. Rumors that Apple was looking for a cooperation partner with BMW and Daimler were denied in advance. For a while, the i3 was traded as the basis for an autonomous car from Cupertino. Apple was apparently impressed that BMW has taken a completely new path in building an electric car with the i3. “They kept telling us how brave they were to take this step,” a high-ranking BMW manager told auto motor und sport.

Takeover of Drive.ai

Drive.ai

An autonomously driving van from Drive.ai

The downsizing seems to be over. According to media reports, the tech group wants to take over the start-up Drive.ai. There they have specialized in autonomous driving, two converted Nissan panel vans are already in test series.

When taking over, however, as the news service Bloomberg reports, Apple is not interested in Drive.ai's technology. Rather, one wants to bring the employees and with them the expertise on board.