According to a report, Apple has hired former Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering and former Chief Engineer at Aston Martin, Chris Porritt to work on “special projects”. It is pretty easy to connect the dots between hiring an auto engineer and Apple’s own car aspirations and if you cannot, then this “special project” is nothing but Apple’s Titan Car project that is rumored for some time.
Reports surfaced a few months ago that Project Titan lead Steve Zadesky left Apple. If it is true, then it is likely that Chris Porritt will now be taking over that role looking at his experience and role in previous companies. Porritt is said to have worked on Tesla’s Model S and X vehicles. While his expertise could be useful in plenty of hardware engineering roles, he had a focus on vehicle dynamics, vehicle architecture, and vehicle packaging throughout his long career.
Apple is known for hiring former Tesla employees and even Tesla CEO Elon Musk jokingly called Apple as the “Tesla graveyard”, based on the company’s habit for hiring the automaker’s former engineers.
While we do not know much about Apple’s first car, earlier report claims that Apple has setup a small secret lab in Germany, where some of the best minds in automotive industry are working. In addition, rumors speculate that Apple will unveil their car in 2018 and will be ship it by 2019 or 2020.
