A reporter at The Wall Street Journal said project leader Steve Zadesky is leaving the company. The reporter cited that Zadesky’s departure is not related to job performance and stems from “personal reasons.”
Zadesky is the leader of Project Titan, which many assume is Apple’s electric car project, for the last two years, his departure will certainly be a setback for Apple, but it has not been stated when he his actually leaving Apple.
Zadesky was a high ranking engineer at Ford Motor Company and left in 1999 to work at the Cupertino-based tech firm, where he rose through the ranks to become vice president of iPod and iPhone product design. The Stanford graduate has over 90 patents during his tenure.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a close eye on Project Titan, he recently declared Apple’s taciturn endeavors as “an open secret.” Although Apple has yet to officially confirm or deny it is building a car at all, nothing has been reveal to other than the occasional cryptic statement. Apple CEO Tim Cook said this in November of last year:
“I don’t have anything to announce about our plans. But I think there’s some significant changes in the automobile industry over the next several years with electrification and autonomous driving. And there’s a need for a focus on user interface. And so I think there’s a lot of changes that will go on there.”
Musk is clearly not convinced, however. “It’s very hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it,” Musk recently told the BBC.
Right now, our guess is that Apple has an electric car in the making process that will be debut around 2019, it is not very transparent if the car will be self-driving, manually opearted, or something close.
Posted: at | |