Over the past few months it has been consistently rumored that Apple is making an electric auto, it’s a product that the company has never done before and will certainly be more challenging to make than a smartphone or tablet.
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Apple entering a new market is great for competition, but what if it’s at the expense of start-ups?
In the case of Mission, Kaufman said Apple hired two key engineers from his team as the company was trying to close a round of funding.
The Reuters report noted that “Some close to Mission Motors said it had reached a point of no return by last fall, when departures to Apple, and other companies, accelerated after a long struggle to find funding and a sound business model”.
The timing of Apple’s approach also worked against Mission, as efforts to raise funding were seriously undermined which resulted in potential investors backing out. Apple settled for an unknown sum. More employees followed over the coming months, and according to LinkedIn profiles, at least two former Mission staff left to join Apple in 2012, while insiders claim half a dozen in total made the switch.
This isn’t the first time that Apple has been accused of aggressive poaching to further its alleged vehicle manufacturing operations. In a similar situation, A123 Systems sued Apple for poaching its top engineers and forcing it to abandon key projects.
According to Reuters, Apple hired Nancy Sun, Mission’s vice president of electrical engineering, Mark Sherwood, director of power train systems engineering, and Eyal Cohen, vice president of software and electrical engineering. If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple.
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Apple vehicle. How much will it cost? All of these are electric vehicle key skills that Apple would likely not have had access to without hiring externally. Let us know in the comments.
