Apple Has Just Dug up From Tesla

Want to go to work at Apple? simple. Go to Tesla for a few years and wait for Apple to dig you.

Although Apple's planning for the car business has been intimidated, its ambitions are no longer hidden in Tesla's "dig the corner". According to a recent Bloomberg report, Apple hired Tesla Engineering Vice President Steve MacManus.

Since last year, at least three executives of Tesla have been dug up by Apple. As a result, Tesla CEO Elon Musk called Apple "Tesla's Tomb" in an interview with the German "Business Daily".

What does Apple look at Tesla?

Apples and Tesla, which seem to be inconsistent, have a lot of worlds in their respective industries. Nowadays, Apple is increasingly actively deploying in the automotive field, making the two more likely to face each other.

It is reported that McManus, who was "digging the corner", will be the senior director of Apple, but Apple has not disclosed the field it will be engaged in. According to the information, McManus joined Tesla in May 2015 as the vice president of engineering, responsible for Tesla electric car interior and exterior work. Prior to joining Tesla, McManus worked in Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley, Aston Martin and other car companies, with 20 years of experience in building cars.

What is the value of McManus's professional experience for Apple?

Since last year, Apple has dug up many engineers and executives from Tesla. In March of this year, Apple hired Michael Schwekutsch, vice president of Tesla Drive Systems. Subsequently, Apple's former senior vice president Doug Field returned to Apple after working in Tesla for a few years.

Some analysts pointed out that Apple's "excavation angle" behind many Tesla technology executives is that it is in urgent need of Tesla's technical research and development experience in the field of electric vehicles.

Due to too many "cut corners", there are even rumors that Apple may acquire Tesla. It is reported that Wall Street analyst Craig Irwin has predicted that Apple had wanted to acquire Tesla for $240 per share in 2013, when the two CEOs had already negotiated on the matter.

There are still some industry analysts and investors speculating that Apple may still have plans to acquire Tesla. If the plan comes true, it will be a win-win result for Apple and Tesla: On the one hand, Tesla's share price and cash flow are not stable, and capacity problems are more prominent. Apple can fund its car projects and SpaceX. Support; on the other hand, Apple is under pressure to open up new businesses.

At present, Apple's three major hardware has been declining for many years, and the market share of smartphones has begun to expand. If Apple wants to smoothly extend its business to the automotive sector and be linked by its industry, Tesla's technical support will play a catalytic role.

Apple is "difficult to hide love" in the automotive field

How long Apple has been ignoring Tesla may not be perfect, but its enthusiasm for the automotive industry is increasing. In 2013, Apple developed the car system Carplay, and later established a car lab, and began recruiting companies from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and Google.

In the car field exploration that Apple is silently carrying, the most well-known is the Project Titan project of the driverless car program established by Apple in 2014. According to the plan at the time, Apple wanted to build a self-driving car that could subvert the industry in the United States, but because it did not have much technology accumulation in car research and development, the process was difficult. Subsequently, Apple cut a large number of employees of the "Titan" project, and the official public said that the entire project has been shifted from "making cars" to "developing key technologies for autonomous vehicles."

In 2017, Apple obtained a California Automated Driving Vehicle Test License. Apple CEO Cook said in an interview with the media: "Automated driving is almost the mother of all Apple AI projects, and it is the most difficult to overcome, but automation also makes Apple excited."

An Apple spokesperson said that the company's team has been working on autonomous driving and related fields, but the team's focus in 2019 will be placed in several key areas, and some team members will be transferred to other parts of the company.

If these are just low-key explorations of Apple in the automotive field, then in June this year, Apple announced the move of the auto-driving car startup Drive.ai, which has already made this ambition "clear."

According to the data, most of the founders of Drive.ai are from the Wu Enda team of Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Wu Enda is the chief scientist of Baidu and is called "Google Brain". At this stage, Drive.ai has achieved the L4 level unmanned highway road test, and can also solve the complex application scenarios of autonomous driving vehicles such as rainy days, nights and commuting hours.

Some analysts believe that after the acquisition of Drive.ai, Apple is expected to use its talents and experience in autonomous driving to enhance competitiveness in unmanned machine vision and deep learning. However, the autopilot has long been a strong player such as Waymo, Cruise, Ford and Volkswagen. Apple can catch up and it is not known.