But Electrek reports that Apple has hired Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, Chris Porritt, to take on Zadesky’s role.Porritt worked on Tesla’s Model S and Model cars, as well as the Model 3 chassis.
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Porritt has been with Tesla for about three years.
Apple is either well on its way to developing some sort of automobile or else is simply hiring top vehicle talent for no apparent reason. Now a new report says a veteran of both Aston Martin and Tesla has joined Apple’s ranks too.
Apple previously hired several Tesla engineers to join its auto project with Zadesky, a former Ford engineer before joining Apple in 1999, reportedly in charge of hundreds of employees as part of Project Titan. Porritt would replace Steve Zadesky, the executive who had been leading Apple’s vehicle initiative but who was reported in January to be leaving the company.
Before moving to Silicon Valley, Porritt was a key engineer in the United Kingdom automotive industry. While at Aston Martin, Electrek notes that Porritt was credited with making some of the company’s most iconic vehicles in recent years, including the One-77 supercar, V12 Zagato and Aston Martin DB9 as noted in our cover graphic. His title at Apple is a deliberately vague, “Special Projects Group PD Administrator”.
We can confirm that some senior Apple engineers will be reporting directly to Porritt, including Product Development Engineering Director, Albert Golko, who until a year ago was working for the iPhone group and now on unspecified products.
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The Apple Car remains the most mysterious project in all of car-dom at the moment.
