Apple’s secret car project loses another top CEO

The company announced that Christopher “CJ” Moore, a former Tesla Autopilot software engineer who left to join Apple’s secret car project last year, is leaving Apple to join Luminar, a Lidar company based in Orlando, Florida, as its new head of programs. Moore only lasted seven months at Apple.

Moore is among a group of CEOs from other leading companies to join Luminar, which makes laser sensors that help self-driving vehicles “see” their surroundings. But his departure from Apple is another indication of the tech giant’s struggle to retain talent for its bewildering efforts to make an autonomous electric car – known as Project Titan.

“We attract the world’s best leaders in their fields to implement our vision and realize the future of transportation,” Luminar CEO Austin Russell said in a statement. An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The departure is the latest change in Apple’s automotive division, which has undergone numerous changes over the past several years. Last year, project leader Doug Field left Apple to join Ford, where he was later named in charge of digital systems for the newly created Model E division of electric and self-driving cars. Kevin Lynch, who ran the Apple Watch division after serving as CTO at Adobe, has been chosen to replace Field.

A few weeks later, in November 2021, Moore joined Apple to work on the autonomous driving program, reporting to Stuart Powers, another Tesla entrant, who had previously served as vice president of engineering.

Although the project started in 2014, work on an autonomous electric vehicle is still in its early stages. Earlier, Apple said it only intended to develop self-driving software that other automakers could use — which in itself was a change from trying to build a car.

last year, Bloomberg It reported that Apple had completed “a lot of groundwork” on a new processor intended to power the invisible autonomous electric vehicle. The company has reportedly been speeding up its schedule for the autonomous vehicle it’s developing, with a new goal of launching it in just four years. Now the goal with Project Titan, after several axes, is to create a self-driving car that doesn’t have a steering wheel.

Moore is getting an interesting luminar. During his time at Tesla, he dismissed Elon Musk’s claims about the company’s self-driving car efforts, according to a call note with officials from the California Department of Automobiles. “Elon’s tweet does not match the engineering reality of every CJ,” the note read. “Tesla is currently at Level 2.”

Russell, the young CEO of Luminar, also cast doubt on Musk’s claims to autonomy. In an interview with the edge Last year, Russell described Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems as “best in class” but argued that the company “digged itself a really deep hole” by calling its latest version of Autopilot software “completely self-driving”. Russell calls himself “the leading skeptic of the independent industry”.

Notably, Luminar is rumored to have a partnership with Tesla, though Musk has mocked Lidar as a “crutch” and a “stunt idiot.” A Tesla Model Y was photographed in Florida last year and is fitted with one of the rooftop Luminar sensors.