Have you ever heard that «the good son makes the house come back»? Well, that phrase goes well for the former Apple hardware engineering leader, Doug Field, who for the past five years worked as head of production at Tesla, as disclosed by Daring Fireball. Gruber broke the news after making contact with an Apple spokesman, who confirmed the information about the rehiring.
Field started at Ford as a development engineer before moving on to Segway, company responsible for producing electrical transport equipment – such as the famous hoverboards and scooters – where he worked as CTO and leader of the engineering team. In 2008, he left Segway and left for Apple, assuming the position of vice president of hardware engineering for the Mac. After five years at Apple, the engineer was hired by Tesla, where he supervised and led the production of the Model 3.
Perhaps due to the proximity with the production and with the electric car market itself, Field’s return was so expected by Apple, since the rehiring of the engineer may indicate that the company still maintains an interest in the development of electric vehicles (the well-known «Project Titan»), instead of just producing possible autonomous navigation systems, as has already been considered.
When Apple started the project in 2014, more than 1,000 employees were said to be working on the development of an electric vehicle. Currently, despite little concrete information about his evolution, around 5,000 employees have access to information from the company’s unprecedented plan. Another great hiring for the area was announced last June – Jaime Waydo, an automotive specialist who was at Waymo.
Although Apple has not confirmed whether Field will work on the «Project Titan», it is very likely that this is indeed his destiny. At the time when he was VP of Mac hardware, he worked with the current head of the Apple project, Bob Mansfield. Now, it is possible that the two will meet again to put into action the slow development of this long-awaited (and speculated) car.
