Apple has hired CJ Moore who was Tesla’s head of software for its AutoPilot autonomous driving system. CJ Moore recently had disputed Elon Musk’s claims around AutoPilot and said that it was fundamentally a level 2 ADAS system while Musk has been pitching it as an autonomous driving system. CJ Moore will be reporting to another ex-Tesla executive Stuart Bowers who is the Vice President of engineering at Apple.
In January Musk had claimed that Tesla’s autopilot will be able to operate reliably to a level better than that of a human driver. Tesla’s FSD driving beta went live only earlier this year but still, it doesn’t make Tesla’s cars fully autonomous. Tesla is also facing an investigation from authorities in the US in relation to crashes while its cars have been in AutoPilot mode. Moore was called in as a witness after a Tesla crash that left two people dead in April.
The Apple Car project which has been called Project Titan has been in the works for more than half a decade – and has been riddled with issues. Apple recently lost its day-to-day chief of the project Doug Field who also left for Ford. Apple placed operational control in hands of Kevin Lynch the former Apple Watch software chief.
Apple has also hired Ulrich Kranz, the co-founder of Canoo, and the former Vice President at BMW who helped create its electric cars. Apple has also poached Tesla’s Andrew Kim, Michael Schewkutsch, and Steve MacManus.
Apple has been struggling to close battery supply from the likes of BYD and CATL while it also still doesn’t have a manufacturing partner having spoken to many players like Magna and Nissan.