Amber Neely
Following the departure of a senior director of engineering, three more "Apple Car" engineers have left to pursue similar positions at air taxi-focused startups.
Recently, Apple lost Michael Schwekutsch, senior director of engineering to Archer Aviation, a startup bent on creating electric-powered air taxis. Schwekutsch currently serves as senior vice president at the startup.
But the losses haven't stopped there, as pointed out by Bloomberg.
Both Alex Clarabut, engineering manager for the team's battery systems group, and Apple hardware engineering manager Stephen Spiteri, have also departed to Archer Aviation.
Eric Rogers, one of Apple's chief engineers for radar systems, has also departed for an air-taxi startup, though this time it's Joby Aviation.
Apple's yet-unannounced "Apple Car" project has existed in some form or another for at least seven years.
Sources familiar with the project have stated that Apple plans to make the vehicle fully autonomous and gives the project a potential launch date in 2025.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley recently advised clients it expects the forthcoming "Apple Car" to be the "ultimate EV bear case," and affect stocks in rival automotive companies.
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19 Comments
Let's face it. If you're in the right career choice, an engineer working at Apple is great on the resume and I'm sure they are compensated well. The lure of a startup, and the lure of equity ownership is something that Apple may not want or be able to compete in.
What we might be seeing is the seeding of EV engineers, going from company to company, and perhaps coming back again -- the equivalent of horizontal gene transfer.
The extent to which NDAs are not hindering this transfer might be interesting to know.
Some might consider these moves a sign of Apple’s lack of progress in the project. They would be wrong, of course. Thankfully ,clear minds have prevailed in this thread so far.
Life happens. Maybe SOME of the people who left Apple left for another reason, like finding a spouse that lived in another city. Apple is a big company. Apple has 147,000 employees. The rate of self-inflicted death in the US is 13.4/100,000 per year. Using that fact, 20 employees at Apple die this way every year. But that doesn't mean Apple has anything to do with it. And neither does leaving Apple mean Apple has anything to do with it. It's just life.