Ford’s surprise announcement – we’ll still have to wait for cars from Apple
A few days ago there was an interesting announcement by the management of the Ford car company. We learned that Doug Field resigned from Ford after three years of working on Apple Car. What this could mean for Apple and other stakeholders?
The car with a bitten apple?
Apple Car is the Cupertino company’s project to build a fully autonomous electric vehicle. Work began as far back as 7 years ago, but along the way a lot of unexpected development issues and changes in the leadership department have happened, significantly contributing to the difficulty in completing the project.
In 2016, it was even rumored that the corporation had quietly shelved the project, but in December 2020, these speculations were finally debunked with the introduction of a new management team. Hundreds of people are currently working on the machine, and the project is still going through a lot of perturbations.
“We are focused on autonomous systems. It’s a core technology that we think is very important. We see it as the mother of all AI projects. This is probably one of the most challenging AI projects we’re working on” – said in 2017 Tim Cook about the company’s automotive plans.
Premature euphoria?
On Friday, July 16, 2021, MacRumors reported that there has been a change of leadership in Apple Car development. The new leader at the time was Kevin Lynch, who is very well known to the entire Apple community, due to his dynamic work on the Apple Watch, but he also developed the brand’s healthcare strategy, and before that worked on the Creative Cloud from Adobe. Apple was proud to announce a new coordinator and begin sourcing components and initiate development of technical agreements with future manufacturing partners. At the time, multiple sources said the finished car could be released as early as 2025.
Probably sounding too optimistic, Apple has a problem!
Unfortunately, yesterday within the same portal we learned that Mr Doug Field, who was vice president of. Special projects left the thresholds of Apple, passing into the embrace of Ford Motor Company. This is not the first such transfer, and with Ford Field itself, he actually started his career working as an engineer for. development – now waiting for him as director of advanced technology and embedded systems. In recent years, he has worked at Tesla, Johnson&Johnson, DEKA, Intel and Segway.
Are we facing another postponement of the Apple Car project?
The possibility exists – brand enthusiasm and belief in the vehicle increased with Doug’s return to Apple in 2018.Now with his departure, one wonders if this will assuage further delays in proving the project. Clearly evidenced by this Juli Clover’s entry and a tweet from Mark Gruman, who specializes in knowledge about the California giant.
Apple: “We’re grateful for the contributions Doug has made to Apple and we wish him all the best in this next chapter.” https://t.co/Trs0xNxL0o
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) September 7, 2021
Overblown Apple – a short thing about brand image
For the brand itself, it is also not good news from a drunkard’s point of view. One of the top people responsible for overseeing an Apple-branded vehicle resigns to work for another auto giant. Of course, this may be dictated by simple salary pragmatism or sentiment to the previous place of work, however observers of the whole event may not have such feelings. The bottom line is that Doug Field has left the team, and given this isn’t the first reshuffle on the subject, it’s simply image damaging for Apple.
Ace of sleeves – cooperation with Toyota Motor Corporation
Apple had another card tucked away in its pocket for the occasion. Around the time of Ford’s announcement, Apple Think edited a report by DigiTimes, in which it was shown that talks with Toyota representatives are underway, and the car could appear as early as 2024! Whether this is a smokescreen to save their name or an actual light at the tunnel, as usual, will be revealed later. In the past, DigiTimes has already informed us about talks with Hyundai, SK Group or LG Electronics, which unfortunately resulted in little.
Let’s hope that these reports will turn out to be true, because the prototypes of the vehicles look really interesting!