Rumors have been circulating for the past few months that Apple is consistently poaching employees from Tesla to get more human resources for its car project. A new report suggests that the company has been able to poach the top Tesla executive, Chris Porritt, who used to be the vice president of vehicle engineering at Tesla. This high-profile hire comes merely months after the head of Apple’s car project Steve Zadesky left Apple.
Porritt has been with Tesla for about three years. CEO Elon Musk must have done quite a bit to convince him to leave his old job, Porritt spent 16 years working at Aston Martin, where he had the post of chief engineer.
During his time at Aston Martin, Porritt handled major projects like the One-77 supercar as well as the development of the company’s VH platform on which the DB9 and V12 Vantage are based. Simply put, this man knows cars.
Porritt is yet to update his LinkedIn profile to reflect this change of employer, Apple has not officially commented on this matter and neither has Tesla. The scribe that published this report has been right in the past so there’s a possibility that it’s right about this as well.
Not much is known about Apple’s car project right now, there are just rumors and speculation, the latest being that the company is operating a secret lab out of Germany which is staffed with the best and brightest poached from Germany’s leading car manufacturers.