Author: Xiaodong Xu

On September 7, Silicon Valley brought a heavyweight personnel change to the US automotive industry.

Doug Field, the vice president of Apple’s car project Project Titan who has been behind the scenes for many years and the actual chief engineer of Apple’s car, switches to Ford Motor Company as the chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. He reports directly to Ford CEO Jim Farley.

Ford stated that Doug Field will be responsible for leading Ford’s vehicle controls, online experiences, information entertainment, navigation, structure, platform, driving assistance technology, and vehicle network security.

Ford CEO Jim Farley tweeted and welcomed Doug Field’s arrival, and described Doug’s arrival as a “watershed moment” for Ford.

Of course, not only Jim, but many executives in the automotive industry are paying attention to Doug Field’s movements, so who is Doug Field? Let’s take a look together.

Who is Doug Field?

Doug Field graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering. Doug joined Ford in 1987. More than 20 years later, Doug Field came to Apple as a product design vice president and then was responsible for the development of Mac.

Doug once stated that “before Tesla appeared, I had never seriously considered leaving Apple. But as the first high-tech car company in modern history, Tesla has finally become an opportunity for me and many others to realize the dream of making the best car in the world, and it is one of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley.”

Therefore, in September 2013, Doug Field switched to Tesla from Apple. During his time at Tesla, he quickly demonstrated his engineering talent and became the only senior vice president of engineering at Tesla within a year, second only to former Tesla CTO J.B. Straubel.

# Translation

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has always claimed that Doug is the chief engineer of Model 3. However, Doug’s responsibilities are more than those of traditional automotive company’s chief engineer. At Tesla, Doug is responsible for both cars and production lines, combining engineering and manufacturing to optimize the design of vehicles and automation of production lines.

As a result, the world’s first pure electric car with sales exceeding one million, Model 3, was born.

Both current and former bosses have high praise for Doug.

Ford CEO Jim Farley commented on Doug Field, “He is one of the most respected engineering and product design leaders in the world, and has always been the driving force behind breakthrough products in the automotive, technology, and mobile fields.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, “I think Doug is one of the most talented engineers in the world.”

It is clear that Doug Field had a significant role in product development. After the completion of the Model 3, Doug returned to Apple in 2018 and collaborated with Bob Mansfield, an Apple veteran and the person in charge of Apple’s car project, known as the “Titan Project.”

The Titan Project

The Titan Project can be described as full of ups and downs. It has been in its eighth year since 2014. The project has also gone through three leaders and three main executives.

According to the Wall Street Journal, as early as February 2014, Apple CEO Tim Cook approved the Titan Project. At that time, the first leader was Steve Zadesky, who was then the vice president of product design at Apple, and was committed to the development of autonomous electric vehicles and reported directly to Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering.

In early 2016, Steve left Apple due to personal reasons. As a result, the Titan project underwent its first major restructuring in early 2016. At that time, Apple did not find a clear direction, and the Titan project was also facing internal challenges.Until July 2016, the Titan project underwent a complete leadership change, with Bob Mansfield, the former head of hardware engineering for Apple Watch, leading the research and development of the Titan project.

Bob’s leadership brought the first strategic adjustment to the Titan project, shifting focus from the research and development of integrated hardware and software for autonomous electric vehicles to the development of autonomous software systems. At the same time, the production time for Apple’s car was adjusted from 2020 to 2021.

Fast forward to Doug Field, who returned to Apple in August 2018 after leaving Tesla, serving as Vice President of the Titan project and reporting to Bob, unaware that Model 3 sales would exceed 1 million by 2021. Under Doug’s leadership, the strategy of Titan shifted back to vehicle engineering, away from autonomous software systems. Apple’s car strategy underwent yet another round of adjustment in response to the leadership change.

Under Doug’s leadership, over 200 Titan project employees were laid off in January 2019. In April and July of the same year, two VP-level Tesla engineers joined the Titan project, one responsible for the powertrain of Roadster, semi and Cybertruck, and the other in charge of the layout of wire harnesses and seats in the interior.

Apple is now returning to developing integrated hardware and software for autonomous electric vehicles. The Titan project has undergone numerous swings back and forth between integrated hardware and software, software and integrated hardware, leading to constant delays. According to renowned Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the production time for Apple’s car has been pushed back to 2023-2025.

On December 8, 2020, Bloomberg reported that Bob Mansfield, head of the Titan autonomous car project, retired for the second time. The Titan project ushered in its third leader, John Giannandrea, former senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy at Apple and responsible for the development of Core ML and Siri.The recent changes in the senior leadership of Apple’s car project happened in July of this year. According to foreign media reports, Kevin Lynch joined the Apple Car team, having previously been responsible for the Apple Watch and internal health planning at Apple. At this point, the Titan project had two project leaders.

This made me curious about having two project leaders for one project.

Now it is well understood that Doug had the intention to leave the Titan project in July, and Kevin Lynch started to take over his work.

On September 7th, Ford officially announced that Doug had left Apple for Ford. In a conference call with reporters on the same day, Doug said, “Apple doesn’t talk about new products, and I’m not going to talk about my work at Apple either.”

Therefore, we cannot know the current progress of the Titan project. When asked whether Apple had Doug sign a non-compete agreement, he said “nothing is stopping me from working full-time for Ford.”

With Doug’s departure and Kevin Lynch’s arrival, the Titan project has gone through three leaders, three primary project leaders, and eight years. Doug’s departure has led foreign media to hold a pessimistic view of Apple’s car, with many believing that Apple’s car may not even be launched in 2025, and that it may become even more distant.

Looking ahead, after joining Ford, Doug will lead the development of the next generation of Blue Oval Intelligence technology stack to provide “constantly updated and improved smart connected vehicles,” which will be Doug’s first work back at Ford after 28 years.

Model 3 has become the most important work in Doug’s career. Before the arrival of the Apple Car, will Doug at Ford bring us another “hit product”?

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.