Apple car, with wave of recent departures, faces make-or-break 2022
Going on eight years, the car project needs to hire and hold onto the right people in order to realize its goal of a truly autonomous car.
It’s hard to believe we’re approaching year eight of Apple’s work on a self-driving car. For all the fits and starts, 2022 could prove to be the project’s most pivotal.
The original iPhone was famously in the lab for about three years before hitting the market. The first iPad and the Apple Watch also were in development for about that long. Work on Apple’s upcoming mixed-reality headset began around 2016. If all goes according to plan, it’ll be introduced at the six-year mark, sometime in 2022.
Upon Field’s departure from the company, the keys to the project landed in the hands of Kevin Lynch. Unlike the prior four leaders, Lynch has neither hardware leadership expertise nor a history in the car world, though he is known to drive a Tesla. His experience stops at software. Lynch did transform the Apple Watch from a product without a clear purpose into an indispensable device for notifications and health monitoring for millions of users.
Software is core to the Apple Car in at least two ways: the underlying self-driving software that will power the car and, as with all things Apple, the operating system users will interact with to operate the vehicle.
Upon taking charge, Lynch instilled a new, singular direction for the project: a fully-autonomous car that eschews a steering wheel and pedals and aims for a limousine-like experience. He also pushed the development team, known as the Special Projects Group, to pick up the pace of work and aim for an introduction of the car as early as 2025, I reported in November.
Now that Lynch has figured out what he wants from the project, he and Apple must execute on that vision. The biggest challenge, aside from perfecting the technology, will be to retain the talent that will make this car a reality. Apple declined to comment for this column.