The Apple Car project continues to lose key players. Over the last couple of weeks, the project lost three critical engineers.
Eric Rogers was Apple’s chief engineer for radar systems on the project. He left for a new opportunity at flying-taxi startup Joby Aviation.
Alex Clarabut was a manager in the battery systems group at Apple. He left for a chance at Archer Aviation, developing a fleet of air taxis.
Finally, Stephen Spiteri was an Apple hardware engineering manager. He joins Alex Clarabut at Archer Aviation, according to Bloomberg.
These three key players join a growing list of top-end talent, leaving Apple for other opportunities. Doug Field and Michael Schwekutsch departed the wannabe car manufacturer for different leadership positions.
The departures at Apple is a little surprising. The company attracted some of the top names in the autonomous and EV world, but the seven-year-old project continues to struggle. The project seems to have bad luck with turnovers and strategy shifts every year or so.
However, Apple is still making moves. The company hired Urlich Kranz, who previously led self-driving car startup Canoo and EV development at BMW. In addition, they also hired CJ Moore, who is a former self-driving software director at Tesla.
Little is known about the state of the Apple car project besides a 2025 launch, but excessive high profile turnover is not a positive sign things are going well.