Earlier this month, former Tesla senior designer Andrew Kim started working for Apple. And according to Kim’s LinkedIn profile, he worked on the Model 3, Model S, Model X, Roadster V2, Model Y, and Semi products at Tesla. Kim is currently listed as a “designer” at Apple.
This hiring has reignited rumors about Apple potentially working on a car. But there is also speculation that Kim could also be working on an augmented reality project at Apple such as a headset or smart glasses.
The Verge reported that Kim worked on designing the cabin space inside of the Model 3 last year. And Kim worked at Microsoft prior to Tesla where he helped design the user interface of Windows 10, HoloLens, and Xbox One S. Then he was hired by Tesla about three years later.
Several years ago, a report surfaced that Apple was working on a self-driving car project called Project Titan. But then it was reported that Apple reassigned teams that were working on cars back in 2016 in order to build autonomous vehicle software.
“We’re focusing on autonomous systems, and clearly one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a Bloomberg interview at the WWDC conference last year. “There are others, and we sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on. And so autonomy is something that’s incredibly exciting for us.”
Kim is not the only Tesla executive that Apple hired recently. Several months ago, Apple hired Tesla’s Senior Vice President of Engineering Doug Field.
And CNBC reported earlier this year that Apple hired dozens of current and former Tesla employees since late 2017 across manufacturing, security, and software. As of August, CNBC determined that Apple hired at least 46 people who worked at Tesla based on LinkedIn data.
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