| Bloomberg
It’s hard to believe that we’re approaching eighth year of Apple’s work on a self-driving car. With all the beginnings, 2022 could prove to be the most important project.
The original iPhone was known in the lab for about three years before it hit the market. The first iPad and Apple Watch were also in development for about that long. Work on Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset began around 2016. If everything goes according to plan, it will be rolled out after six years, sometime in 2022.
All of these new products were pretty consistently on the top throughout her gestation period. But the Apple Car, as many industry watchers have called the company’s autonomous vehicle, was an exercise in leadership change.
The project started in 2014 under the direction of Steve Zadesky, a former Ford engineer who became an iPhone and iPod manager. It was later passed into the hands of former hardware manager Dan Riccio and later his predecessor Bob Mansfield, who retired last year. Ex-Tesla manager Doug Field was at the helm for a period from 2018 to September.
After Field left the company, the keys to the project ended up in the hands of Kevin Lynch. Unlike the previous four guides, Lynch has neither hardware leadership experience nor a history in the auto world, despite being known for driving a Tesla. His experience ends with software. Lynch transformed the Apple Watch from a product with no clear purpose into an indispensable notification and health monitoring device for millions of users.
Software is at the core of the Apple car in at least two ways: the underlying self-driving software that powers the car and, as with everything Apple-related, the operating system that users use to operate the car.
By taking over the management, Lynch has given the project a new, unique direction: a fully autonomous car that dispenses with a steering wheel and pedals and aims for a sedan-like experience. He also urged the development team, the Special Projects Group, to increase the pace of work and aim for the car to be introduced as early as 2025, I reported in November.
Now that Lynch has figured out what to expect from the project, he and Apple need to make that vision a reality. The biggest challenge, besides perfecting the technology, is retaining the talent that will make this car a reality. Apple declined to comment on this column.
While Field was the biggest departure from the Apple Car team that year in name and title, he was just one of many people who moved on. In early 2021, the wave of exit began with four of the company’s top Apple Car executives, all reporting to Field: Dave Scott, Jaime Waydo, Dave Rosenthal, and Benjamin Lyon. Field then screwed down for Ford in September. Michael Schwekutsch, who was in charge of the hardware for Apple’s project, should follow soon.
Not only top managers have resigned. Recently, at least three key engineers who worked on battery technology, propulsion systems, and self-propelled sensors have left. Some of the former Apple employees have joined air taxi startups. So do these engineers think they’re more likely to bring a flying car to market than an Apple self-driving vehicle for the road?
The coming year will be for Apple. Even though it has the vision, it has to hire and keep the right people for everything to work. If after a year under its fifth Apple Car boss it can’t figure out how to do it, maybe it should reconsider the project’s feasibility – or just put its nearly $ 200 billion in cash and buy some new EV startups to get around to get it it rolls.