Apple's next big thing in doubt as chief of self-driving car project exits
The abrupt departure of Apple Inc.’s top
automotive executive imperils its efforts to develop a self-driving car, a
project that’s been seen as one of the tech giant’s biggest bets.
Doug Field, a Tesla Inc. veteran
who joined Apple in
2018 to head up its car project, left Tuesday to become Ford Motor Co.’s
chief advanced technology officer. The announcement, which came after Bloomberg
first reported the news, made only passing reference to Field’s work at Apple.
Field’s exit calls into question the progress Apple has made
toward developing the technology and experience needed to compete in the auto
industry. It’s just the latest upheaval for the division: Field is the fourth
executive leading the Apple car project to step away in its seven-year history.
Not that developing self-driving cars has
been easy for anyone else. Tesla, the market leader in electric vehicles, is
still probably years away from offering fully autonomous cars. Alphabet Inc.’s
Waymo has suffered a rash of departures in its efforts to develop the
technology. And Uber Technologies Inc. agreed to sell off its
autonomous-driving division last year.
Apple’s car efforts have always been a bit of a paradox -- it’s a
hotly anticipated product that the company says almost nothing about. Field’s
official title at Apple was vice president of special projects, belying the
significance of his role. But he was entrusted with developing one of the company’s
“next big things,” a product that could keep sales growing the way the iPhone,
iPad and Apple Watch did in the past decade.
Apple first kicked off plans to develop a self-driving electric
car around 2014, entering a race with the likes of Tesla. By 2016, the
project was struggling with confusing messaging from leadership, a lack of
vision and problems surrounding autonomous-driving technology. Apple also found
it hired too many people and laid off hundreds of engineers from the project in
2016 and 2019.
Around the time of the first layoffs, former chief Apple hardware
engineer Bob Mansfield began overseeing the effort -- known as Project Titan --
and sought to refocus on the underlying capabilities. Apple seemed to zero in
on the technology that runs self-driving cars, rather than trying to build a
whole car itself.
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