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Apple hires former Fiat Chrysler executive for its rumored electric car team

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple has hired a seasoned veteran from the automotive industry for its rumored car initiative. The report claims that Apple has hired Doug Betts, who previously led global quality control at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Betts worked at Fiat Chrysler until last year and started at Apple earlier this month.

While details of Betts’ role at Apple are sparse at this point, he has updated his LinkedIn page to reflect his new position. His profile says he joined Apple in July, but only lists his title as “Operations – Apple Inc.” out of San Francisco.

The report goes on to state that Apple also recently hired one of the top autonomous vehicle researchers from Europe. Earlier this year, the WSJ reported that Tim Cook approved Apple’s electric car project back in 2014 and has assigned “hundreds” of employees to the project’s team. It has been reported in the past that Apple has hired president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development Johann Jungwirth, along with other auto industry execs. We broke down some of the notable members of Apple’s car team here, as well.

Furthermore regarding hires for its electric car team, Apple has been in an ongoing poaching war with Tesla. Although earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed out that his company has poached 5 times as many employees from Apple as Apple has from Tesla. Musk also commented that he “hopes” Apple will enter the car market.

Apple is hoping to launch its own car by the year 2020, according to reports from earlier this year.

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Comments

  1. hmmm… global quality control at FCA, didnt Apple do a little research first and found out FCA has some of the worst quality cars?! Fiat is known in Europe for their poor reliability

  2. rogifan - 9 years ago

    Ok do people still think this is just about infotaiment systems in other automakers cars?

    • jacosta45 - 9 years ago

      I think they want to make a car OS. Not so much hardware, but provide software to control everything about the car, from your iDevice…

      • rogifan - 9 years ago

        And what car manufacturer has indicated they want a car OS from Apple? I haven’t heard of one. And how well did that work out with Microsoft? Plus the people Apple is recruiting to this project are mechanical engineers, have experience in manufacturing and drive trains; operations. Not the kind of people you’d be hiring if your focus was only software.

      • andrew (@andimandrew) - 9 years ago

        Apple wouldn’t be creating this team if it weren’t something they’re seriously interested in. CarPlay works fine for what it is – being only software. Although when Apple considers an entirely new product, they’ll be making the hardware to go with the software as always. Whether or not the hardware is the entire car, a part of the car, an extension of the car, etc… is the question.

  3. irelandjnr - 9 years ago

    For electric cars to go mainstream we need no only long range and somewhat affordable cost of ownership and charger stations everywhere, but we need a much faster way of charging the cars too like graphene super-capicator batteries. Without something that can charge from empty to full in less than 10 minutes this is going to be a significant, pardon the pun, road block.

  4. Dafty Punk - 9 years ago

    OK, here we go:
    First: Tesla has had several meetings with Apple, with no comment from either company about what those meetings were about outside of the confirmation that they were not about Apple buying Tesla.
    Second, Elon has said that if another company is willing to put as much money into building out and maintaining the supercharger network as Tesla, then he would have no problem sharing the tech.
    There aren’t too many companies out there with that much cash to pull it off, but Apple sure as hell has money to burn, and is on a real green kick these days. (And is rumored to be working on an automobile) So Apple teams up with Tesla on the charging network.
    Apple has tons of money “stuck” overseas. So Apple spending $1 billion a year on expanding the supercharging network globally is pennies to them, plus they can finally use that overseas cash. Tesla gets a partner with the same innovative disruptive mentality, Apple gets to partner with an established player with proven technology. Also Apple perhaps uses some modern tech batteries from the gigafactory, so there’s that possibility too.
    Apple is almost never the first to market with something, but when they do enter a segment, they come out swinging, almost always with huge success. They have a small portion of overall handset sales in the world, but take the lions share of all cell phone manufacturer profits combined. Tesla could be in a similar position soon, but there’s room for both. The automotive market is huge.

    So it’s all a rumor, but it’s at least possible. More possible with Apple then any other company I’d say. Time will tell. Once the charging infrastructure is in place, superchargers all over the place, then both Tesla and Apple are suddenly selling electric cars like mad and cornering the market. All because the established players were too blind to see what was coming.

    • rogifan - 9 years ago

      Tim Cook claims Apple has no relationship with Tesla. I like your idea though.

      • Dafty Punk - 9 years ago

        I mean if Apple could enter the EV market and have a instant access to Tesla’s supercharger network with their vehicle that’s a big leg up for Apple. Plus expansion of the said charging network costs apple next to nothing compared to their profits. Tesla stays in the high end, and Apple takes the mid to low end. Maybe the three is actually going to be designed by Apple?

        ****ALL WILD RUMOR**** 8-)

    • charismatron - 9 years ago

      Those who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are often the ones that do.

      • Dafty Punk - 9 years ago

        One final note on all this. Who’s really good at explaining why people need a new technology they thought they never would need and then selling them on it? Apple. Why buy an iPhone? Sold. Why buy a tablet? Sold. Why by a watch? Sold. (granted so far a little less on the watch side, but you see where I’m going with this.) Apple is good at explaining to people why they need something they never thought that they needed. Most people don’t think they need an electric car, but Apple could probably change a ton of minds.

    • This sounds very good to me and I wish it will happen / is happening.

  5. charismatron - 9 years ago

    Auto correct for “hired”? Don’t know how that works, but auto-correct works in mysterious ways.

  6. taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

    Apple introduced iOS in the car June 10 2013 and here we are July 2015 and CarPlay has is available in a handful of vehicles. Apple needs to give it and a car os full attention before they tackle anything else in the automotive industry.

    Apple come up with good software CarPlay,HealthKit ,HomePlay and ReasearchKit, but as done virtually nothing to help foster hardware that take full advantage of those software platforms.

    Apple is becoming good at half ass implementation of its technologies and software. They have there software teams and engineers stretched to thin already. Teams shouldn’t have to work on iOS, OS X, watch OS, Car Play and whatever comes up. They should keep focus on one thing.

    Rather Apple is working on a car OS or a vehicle they need to focus on the sluggish rollout of other platforms first. CarPlay and HomeKkt is really a joke at this point.

    • piablo - 9 years ago

      I don’t think the issues with Car Play are due to Apple. Car Play is not revolutionary by any means. It’s simply providing an interface for an iPhone. This is definitely poor coding on the part of car makers. Car manufacturers are car manufacturers, that’s it. BMW probably has the best infotainment system in terms of ergonomics and functionality, and it took them YEARS to get it there. Car Play is taking a while to get out there because car manufacturers do not value it as much as we do and coding is just not their specialty.

  7. Paul Van Obberghen - 9 years ago

    Me believe that if Apple is to revolutionize the car market, it wont be through an autonomous electrical car, though that would be something anyway. It would be a car that you don’t own but one that you’ll call whenever you need it, just like a cab but without a driver. You’ll be able to call one the size of your needs at the given moment. You wont need to care about charging stations, parking spot, insurance, maintenance, etc,… Public transportations would always be prefered and cheaper, but there are many instances when public transportations just aren’t practical. Sadly, this will kill a whole profession…

    • rettun1 - 9 years ago

      While I think this is a better, more sustainable future for cars, I don’t think apple will be into having everybody share theirs vehicles. They’ll be happy to sell the cars to each individual for 60k-70k and maybe a high end model for 100k. It’s all about the $$$ lebowski

Author

Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com