According to a new report, Apple has hired longtime Ford engineer Desi Ujkashevic for the Apple Car team. Ujkashevic has been with Ford since 1999 and was previously the company’s global director of automotive safety engineering.
Apple poaches longtime Ford engineer for development of Apple Car
As reported by Bloomberg, Ford veteran Desi Ujkashevic has been added to the Apple Car team. As per the report, Ujkashevic is expected to provide her expertise in navigating regulatory issues, which the tech giant will have to deal with in order to ship a self-driving EV in the next few years. During Ujkashevic’s career at Ford, she was in charge of the “engineering of interiors, exteriors, chassis and electrical components for many Ford models.”
Apple has been long rumored to be working on its first passenger self-driving electric vehicle (EV) which has been reported to launch by 2025-2027. However, the project has not been seeing stable development with key engineers leaving Apple to work for other automobile manufacturers.
In fact, TF Securities tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently reported that the Apple Car team has been “dissolved” for some time now and suggested that the team should reorganize in the next 3 to 6 months to achieve its goal of the EV’s mass production by 2025. With today’s report, it seems that the project has finally started to pick up steam once again.
As per previous reports, we expect that Apple Car will offer level 5 self-driving autonomy without any human interference and will be powered by a new revolutionary mono-cell battery which will help provide a longer range and lower power consumption. In addition, the EV might feature LED displays, LiDAR scanners to measure the distance from other objects, AR display, and more.
As for when Apple’s first self-driving EV could hit mass production or go on sale, we do not know. Currently, analysts still predict it could be debuted by 2025, however that timeframe may be revised if the development of the vehicle faces issues.
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