Apple Hires Former Mercedes-Benz Engineers For Self-Driving Car: Report

Apple is considering who to award supply contracts to for an upcoming autonomous car, and according to new reports, the company has hired two former employees of another automaker.

On Friday, MacRumors reported that Apple has hired two former engineers at Mercedes-Benz, presumably to work on developing the upcoming Apple Car. While the first hire worked on steering, dynamics, software and product management, as well as overall mass production of the vehicles at Mercedes-Benz, while it isn’t clear what the second hire’s previous responsibilities were.

In filling out a crew for the Apple Car project, internally known as “Project Titan,” Apple moved the previous employee championing the Health and Apple Watch teams to the self-driving car project.

Apple also hired a former BMW Executive and the previous CEO of Canoo, just after the Apple Car project saw a few managers leave for other companies in June.

Apple also hired the former Head of Chassis Development at Porsche in February, as well as hiring a number of Tesla engineers despite the project being at least five years from coming to fruition.

Last month, Apple expanded its self-driving test fleet in California to 69 cars, as glimpsed at in a permit issued by the state of California.