Apple Car Project Loses Senior Manager to Rivian

Image: Apple

In this week’s edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported that Apple’s autonomous electric car project has lost yet another key manager — this time to electric truck startup Rivian.

Jonathan Sive, who was working on vehicle design and hardware engineering for Apple, has now parted ways with the company. Sive was a “fairly senior manager” on the project and had only been at Apple for about two years.

Prior to joining Apple, Sive held positions at BMW, Tesla, and Google parent company Alphabet’s Waymo. According to Sive’s LinkedIn profile, he will be responsible for vehicle layout, ergonomics, and other tasks at Rivian.

“Despite his departure, I believe work on the car continues,” Gurman wrote. Apple’s electric vehicle (EV) project has struggled to hold on to management-level members, some of whom left after only a year or two on the team.

Development on the Apple Car, known internally as ‘Project Titan,’ is currently led by Apple Watch chief Kevin Lynch. Apple’s efforts to develop a self-driving electric car have seen many a setback, raising questions as to whether they will ever bear fruit.

Even so, Apple continues to hire just as many automotive executives as it bleeds. Just a couple of months ago, the iPhone maker nabbed longtime Lamborghini executive Luigi Taraborrelli.