Dough Field, Vice President of Special Projects at Apple, leaves the company and his job in the Apple Car to join Ford, according to the same company has announced. One more change in the leadership of the complex Titan project.
A project that needs the right direction
We have seen several changes to the dome of Project Titan in recent months. Dough Field, which will now work for Ford, started at Apple in 2018, where led the development of the future Apple Car alongside Bob Mansfield and John Giannandrea. The latter took the leadership of the project in 2020 and recruited Kevin Lynch from the Apple Watch team to be part of the leadership.
Dough Field has had a curious resume within Apple. Initially he was hired as vice president of hardware engineering for the Mac, a position he left to join Tesla as responsible for the production of the Model 3. In 2018, as we have already said, he returned to Apple to lead the Titan project and now leave the company for the second time to return to Ford where, in fact, he began his career.
It is easily understandable that a project of the scale of the Titan project has a slightly uneven path in its early days. We must remember that this is a new product category that is far, far, from the usual within Apple. We are not talking about creating an iPad when only the iPhone existed or an Apple Watch when smart watches hardly existed, we are talking about creating a car.
A project very different from the ones we usually see at Apple and that requires fine-tuning even the same intention before even starting to raise the technology that will make it possible.
The very approach of the project is something that, as far as we know, has seen adjustments between the possibility of making a complete car or creating software that could be implemented in cars from other manufacturers. Having ruled out this last option, the most recent information we have is that John Giannandrea is the head of the project, a person specializing in artificial intelligence, which it already gives us clues of the direction the project is pointing.
We regularly see various patents on possible technologies that would make the Apple Car a benchmark in the industry. It is clear that Apple is not considering one more autonomous car, it is rethinking what a car is, and how we use it, from scratch. There are many technologies that could end up reaching the Apple Car of which, because we do not know, we do not even know if it will have a steering wheel.
We expect to see the Apple car during the second half of this decade, that is, in 5 years at the earliest. It is clear that developing a product like the Apple Car takes time and dedication, especially when you consider the attention to detail that Apple applies to all its devices. For now we will have to wait a little longer, but as far as we know, the wait will clearly be rewarded.
Image | Boris M