A recent hire by Apple is making news today. Andrew Kim is the person in question. He has left his senior designer position at Tesla to join Apple. His LinkedIn profile has been updated to reflect that he now works at Apple as of December 2018. Kim’s Instagram also confirms that his first day at Apple’s HQ was on last Tuesday.
It has long been rumored that Apple is working on a full-fledged car. There was never any confirmation or denial of this but lately, the rumor mill had accepted that perhaps the company wasn’t building a car. Its ambitions in the automotive market were later presented as work on self-driving cars. It’s no secret that Apple does have test vehicles on public roads collecting data for a self-driving system.
However, some recent hires that Apple has made will once again bring up speculation that the company may be working on an actual car. It was reported just back in August that former vice president of Mac hardware Doug Field has rejoined the company. He left Apple to become Tesla’s chief vehicle engineer.
With Andrew Kim now at Apple as well, some will view this as an indication that Apple’s car project is underway once again. He made contributions to the design of several vehicles while he was at Tesla, including the Model 3 and the Model S. He designed the cabin space inside the Model 3.