Tesla's VP of Engineering to join Apple as Senior Director of Engineering

The workplace social platform LinkedIn updated the new whereabouts of Michael Schwekutsch. The vice president of engineering, who announced his resignation from Tesla in early March, joined Apple's SPG department, which is generally believed to be responsible for building cars, as senior engineering director.

This is the nth employee that Apple has poached from Tesla. Tesla CEO Elon Musk once joked that Apple is Tesla's talent recycling station. Michael Schwekutsch, who was poached this time, is a senior powertrain expert who has focused on electric powertrains for the past decade.

With the joining of Michael Schwekutsch, Apple is perfecting its core team for car manufacturing. In August last year, Doug Field, known as the second person in Tesla, joined Apple to take full responsibility for Apple's car business; in December last year, Tesla senior designer Andrew Kim joined Apple. According to foreign media reports, Apple is also frantically recruiting several former Tesla employees.

In addition to recruiting talent frantically from Tesla, Apple has also been poaching talent from other companies, including traditional car companies GM and Ford, battery company A123 Systems, chip company NVIDA, driverless car company Waymo, Tier 1 supplier Bosch, BlackBerry and other companies, covering all aspects of talent needed to build cars. Do you still believe that Apple will not build cars?

01 Electrification, automation and networking are the key points

The automotive industry is clearly showing a trend towards electrification, automation and networking of smart cars, which is also the main direction in which Apple is frantically poaching talent. The following will explain which companies and talents Apple has frantically poached from these three directions.

Electrification

Michael Schwekutsch is Apple's latest electrification expert. Before joining Tesla, he was responsible for the electric and hybrid system projects of BMW i8, Porsche 918 Spyder, Fiat 500eV, Volvo XC90 and other popular vehicles.

After joining Tesla, Michael Schwekutsch was responsible for the design, manufacture and verification of drive units, and participated in the power systems of Tesla Roadster 2 and Tesla Semi. In his more than 20 years of powertrain work experience, the last 10 years have been related to electric power systems, and he has very rich experience.

Before Michael Schwekutsch joined Apple, Apple also poached John Irenland, a former senior powertrain test engineer at Tesla.

The electrification process also requires battery capabilities. Although Apple has cooperated with external parties on power batteries, and it is rumored that Apple has cooperated with Chinese power battery company CATL to develop power batteries, Apple has been recruiting experts from A123 System since 2015.

At that time, Apple recruited five employees from A123 System, including the company's former CTO Mujeeb Ijaz. Because of these lithium battery experts, Apple was sued by A123, but the case was eventually resolved. In addition, Apple also poached some battery technology experts from Samsung and recruited six employees from electric motorcycle startup Ission Motors, which led to the company's bankruptcy.

automation

Automation, or autonomous driving, has always been a key area of ​​Apple's recruitment. Apple now has more than 50 autonomous driving test vehicles in California. This is related to Apple's unremitting efforts in recruiting autonomous driving-related talents.

Apple's autonomous driving recruitment comes from a wide range of sources, including Tesla engineer Jamie Carlson, former NVDIA Deep Learning Director Jonathan Cohen (who worked on the NVDIA Drive NX platform), and former Waymo System Engineering Director Jaime Waydo.

Other self-driving researchers recruited by Apple include Paul Furgale, Vinay Palakkode, a graduate student researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, Xianqiao Tong, who developed ADAS at NVIDIA, and Sanjai Massey, an autonomous driving engineer at Ford. It is worth mentioning that Xianqiao Tong later joined Baidu and founded Roadstar, which recently became the focus of public opinion due to internal strife and went bankrupt.

Apple's recruitment in autonomous driving technology has also targeted Tier 1 suppliers in the automotive industry, including Bosch engineer Stefan Weber of assisted driving systems (ADAS) and Delphi autonomous driving research scientist Lech Szumilas.

Networking

An important foundation for networking is the in-vehicle system. Although Apple has successfully connected cars and the Internet through CarPlay, and has cooperated extensively with car companies to serve car owners, this is still far from the in-vehicle system needed in the era of smart cars.

To this end, as early as 2016, Apple recruited Dan Dodge, the former head of BlackBerry's automotive software department. At BlackBerry, Dan was responsible for developing the QNX in-vehicle entertainment information system, which is still widely used in the automotive field. With such experience, Dan is a suitable candidate for Apple to develop in-vehicle systems.

In addition to poaching BlackBerry's head of automotive software, Apple also poached at least 20 BlackBerry QNX-related employees from BlackBerry, who are currently developing in-car entertainment systems at a facility in Kanata, Canada. It is worth mentioning that Huawei's 2012 laboratory, which is engaged in automotive business, has also been deployed in Canada.

02 Is making cars Apple’s ultimate goal?

Although Apple CEO Tim Cook has stated that Apple is currently conducting research on autonomous driving systems, there has been no news about layoffs or even the closure of Apple's car project, especially since 2019. In particular, the "2018 Disengagement Report" compiled by the California DMV based on data reported by companies conducting autonomous driving tests in California shows that the number of disengagements in Apple's autonomous driving is surprisingly high and the distances are surprisingly short.

Especially since Apple confirmed that it would adjust the personnel of the car project and even lay off employees, the outside world is pessimistic about Apple's car project. In Che Zhijun's opinion, Apple's adjustment of personnel under the leadership of Doug Field, who returned from Tesla to be in charge of the car project, is precisely a signal that Apple's car project will continue.

From joining in August 2018 to personnel adjustments around February 2019, this is very consistent with the targeted adjustments made by a new person in charge based on the company's business status after he is familiar with the company's situation. In particular, Doug recruited colleagues from Tesla, such as senior designer Andrew Kim and Michael Schwekutsch, vice president of electric powertrain engineering, which showed a more obvious signal of car manufacturing.

Doug was in charge of the production of Model 3 at Tesla, Andrew was in charge of the car interior design, and Michael was in charge of the electric power system. In addition, they also have experience in car NVH and battery pack manufacturing engineering.

In addition, Apple has previously recruited more talents with experience in automobile manufacturing, including David Nelson, a former mechanical engineer at Tesla, and Chris Porritt, a former vice president of Tesla. In April 2016, David Masiukiewicz, a former senior CNC (CNC machine tool) programmer at Tesla, joined Apple, as well as Kevin Harvey, who worked in the CNC workshop of Andretti Autosport.

In 2015, Apple also recruited Doug Betts, senior vice president of products and services at Chrysler Group, former Volkswagen engineer Megan McClain, and YouTube celebrity and engineer Mark Rober to develop VR technology in Apple's special project team. VR technology can play an important interactive and entertainment role in driverless cars.

In the case where XiaoLang Zhang, an Xpeng employee and former Apple engineer, was suspected of stealing Apple's automotive trade secrets, data provided by Apple to prosecutors showed that Apple had 5,000 employees working on automotive-related matters, among whom XiaoLang Zhang was a hardware engineer, proving that Apple was conducting automotive hardware-related research.

Such a large number of personnel requires a lot of office space. It is known that Apple officially leases 7 buildings in Sunnyvale. The names of these buildings within Apple are Zeus, Rhea, Athena, etc., which may be related to the Project Titan named after Greek mythology. Project Titan is considered to be Apple's car project.

In addition, Apple has a team related to the car project in Germany. According to the German magazine "Manager", Apple is currently testing a van. Apple previously hoped to cooperate with Volkswagen to modify the van for autonomous driving for commuting within the campus.

In terms of related supporting facilities, Apple also registered three top-level domain names related to cars in December 2015, including apple.car, apple.cars, and apple.auto. Up to now, there is still no news about these three domain names and they have not been used.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple is still developing Apple-branded cars, which are expected to be launched between 2023 and 2025.

After reading this, what are your expectations for Apple Car?

Che Zhijun believes: If Apple Car doesn’t take off, it will be a blockbuster!