The former chief engineer, Doug Field, who was confirmed to have resigned Tesla, returned to Apple yesterday. The news was confirmed by an Apple spokesperson, but did not disclose the new position after Field’s return.
At first it was reported by John Gruber, that Doug Field will work with his old colleague Bob Mansfield to lead Apple’s self-developed autopilot project, Project Titan which is said to be a “Giant Project”, who was previously a co-worker of the Mac computer engineering department.
Doug Field served as vice president of hardware engineering for Apple Mac for five years. He joined Tesla in 2013 and was responsible for the research and development of the Model 3 of the “People’s Car”.
In April, this power was occupied back by CEO Musk. The news of the departure of Doug Field was heard. But Tesla said at the time that Field was only on vacation to recharge and accompany the family, not to leave Tesla.
In addition to Apple and Tesla, Field also has the experience of being a CTO at Segway before joining Apple in 2008 and has a good understanding of transportation technology. Prior to this, Field is also a former vehicle development engineer for Ford.
Apple has been unaware of this project, and last year admitted that the “Giant Plan” existed and loosened some of its tone. A court document in July showed that 5,000 people inside the company were allowed to access project information.
Before Apple acknowledged the existence, there were rumors in October 2016 that Apple abandoned its independent research and development and manufacture of self-driving cars, and in turn cooperated with car manufacturers to build third-party systems.
In the second quarter of 2017, Apple CEO Cook revealed the goal of the “Giant Plan”, which was first publicly confirmed. He believes that autonomous driving is the “mother of all AI projects”. Apple is focusing on the automatic driving system from the perspective of core technology, but the application of this system is not only the car.
Since the beginning of 2018, several sources have reported that Apple’s self-driving fleet has increased to 62 vehicles and 87 drivers. In short, the return of Doug Field is still an interesting message, which shows that Apple is still interested in manufacturing vehicles, although there are reports that the company has reduced the related projects.
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Former worker at Tesla, returning to Apple has somehow defined that under the guidance of Mansfield, the “Project Titan” project has returned to balanced stage after a difficult start.