*Author: Chris Zheng

In the end and beginning of 2020, the looming Apple Car rumors made waves once again.

On January 17th, Eastern time, Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed by Chris Wallace:

Tim: … What’s next for Apple? We will continue to create the best products in the world, not the most, but the best.

Chris: Including Apple cars?

Tim: Well, I can’t comment on market rumors.

Chris: Yes, you can, you can, but you can of course — you’re the CEO.

Tim: You’re right, I choose not to.

This in some ways illustrates the best PR joke in the automotive industry in 2021, arranged by South Korean Hyundai, behind Apple’s will.

On January 7, Hyundai said in a statement that it was in early talks with Apple, but no decision has been made.

Hyundai’s stock price subsequently surged 25%, but the statement went against Apple’s product dissemination strategy that not even Apple’s CEO will break.

So Hyundai promptly issued an updated statement: We have received requests for potential cooperation in the development of autonomous electric vehicles from multiple companies, but no decisions have been made as negotiations are in early stages.

It’s really a case of a liar needing a good memory.

Experts leading experts.Actually, Apple has already hired 14 technical experts for its car project. But before we get into that, let’s talk about organizational structure.

Alibaba, the Chinese internet giant with the highest market value, is one of the world’s most capable tech companies in terms of organizational iteration. In its management, Alibaba divides its job ranks into P-series skill lines and M-series management lines.

The P series ranges from P3 assistant to P8 senior expert to P14 senior scientist, while the M series advances from M1 supervisor to M6 vice president to M10 board chairman.

This management approach has been emulated by many tech companies, including emerging automakers in China.

Apple, on the other hand, is different.

In November 2020, Joel Podolny, the dean of Apple University, published an article in Harvard Business Review titled “How Apple Is Organized for Innovation” in which he introduced Apple’s management principles.

Joel has taught at Stanford University, Harvard University and Yale University, covering fields such as organizational behavior, strategic management and sociology. He joined Apple in 2009 as the senior vice president of human resources and the dean of Apple University, and has a deep understanding of Apple’s organizational management evolution.Joel mentioned the principle of “Experts leading Experts” in the article:

Apple is not a company where general managers oversee managers; rather, it is a company where experts lead experts. The assumption is that it’s easier to train an expert to manage well than to train a manager to be an expert. At Apple, hardware experts manage hardware, software experts software, and so on. (Deviations from this principle are rare.)

At Apple, the rule is to build the “P series” and cultivate it into the “P&M series”.

This is why, behind each Apple hardware and software product, people still remember the names of Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, Tim Cook, Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall, and so on – one after another renowned figures in the industry.

They were not only (formerly) Apple’s management, but also experts who had a deep understanding of products, design, marketing, supply chain, hardware, and software. As is often said, “Experts leading Experts”.

Apple Car Experts

From 2014 to 2021, although the Apple car itself remained hidden behind the scenes, the expert management team of the Apple car has been basically established. Let’s take a look together.

John Giannandrea I, Head of Apple Car

John Giannandrea is the head of Apple Car, with a professional background as Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, in charge of developing machine learning frameworks Core ML and Siri at Apple.Earlier, John Giannandrea was the Senior Vice President of Engineering and the head of AI and search at Google. John now serves as the head of Apple’s car project, which is inextricably linked with Tim Cook’s previous statement that “autonomous vehicles are the mother of all AI projects, and the most difficult one among all artificial intelligence technologies.”

Doug Field I Vice President of Apple Car

Doug Field made a name for himself with his work on the Tesla Model 3. In September 2013, Doug joined Tesla as the Vice President of Vehicle Programs, and from 2015 served as the Chief Engineer for the Model 3. In August 2018, Doug joined Apple as the Vice President of Apple Car.

The achievements of Doug on the Model 3 have almost reached a mythical level. The founder of a Chinese new car company publicly stated that the incredible rise of the Model 3 compared to the Model S/X is largely due to the fact that the chief engineers of the Model S/X are from traditional automakers, while Doug Field knows what a “smart car” is.

Dan Dodge I Head of Apple Car Software

Dan Dodge is the founder of automotive software company QNX. Since QNX’s inception in 1982, Dan has led the development of QNX OS in most mainstream automotive brands. Half of the cars sold globally use QNX software, and QNX has broad prospects in today’s smart car market.

At the end of 2015, Dan retired from QNX. Less than six months later, Dan joined the Apple Car project team. Apple built a new car software development center in Canada near QNX’s headquarters with a space of over 2,000 square meters.

Ian Goodfellow I Director of Apple’s Autonomous Driving Machine Learning

Ian has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and studied under Google Brain founder Andrew Ng and “father of deep learning” Yoshua Bengio. Ian is hailed as the “father of GAN” for proposing the famous generative adversarial networks (GAN), and is one of the top experts in the global artificial intelligence field. GAN was selected as one of the top ten breakthrough technologies of 2018 by MIT Review.

Stuart Bowers I Head of Apple Autonomous Driving Software# Stuart

Stuart was the former Vice President of Autopilot Engineering at Tesla, leading Tesla’s largest Autopilot team responsible for Autopilot maps, quality control, simulations, and firmware updates.

He was also one of the three executives who spoke at Tesla’s Autonomy Day in April 2019.

Michael Schwekutsch

Michael was the former Vice President of Engineering at Tesla, leading the mass production of the Model 3 drive unit while also overseeing the development of the powertrain for Tesla’s electric semi-truck, Cybertruck, and Roadster 2. He holds over 100 engineering design patents.

His arrival at Apple means that Apple’s ambitions for its car project extend beyond software development.

Steve Macmanus

Steve was the former Vice President of Engineering at Tesla, responsible for the layouts of Tesla’s wiring harnesses, seats, and interior. He previously served as the Chief Engineer for Exterior and Hardware at the supercar brand, Aston Martin.

Benjamin Lyon

Benjamin has two roles at Apple. First, he is an Apple veteran who had been with the company since before the iPhone era in 2006. Second, he was one of the founding executives of the Apple Car project in 2014.

Prior to that, he participated in the development of Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint recognition technology.

David Rosenthal

Before joining Apple, David was the founder and CEO of Foundation DB, a software company. At Apple, he is responsible for the engineering management of autonomous driving perception, motion planning, state estimation, control, data infrastructure, and machine learning.

Dave Scott

Dave is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three companies. Prior to joining Apple, he was the COO of Verb Surgical, a digital health and robotics surgery platform company jointly owned by Google and Johnson & Johnson. He is an expert in digital imaging and robotics.

Jaime Waydo

Jaime was formerly the Chief Mobility Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later worked as a systems engineer at Waymo. At Apple, she is responsible for autonomous driving safety.In June 2018, Jaime joined Apple as the Senior Director of Autonomous Driving Safety.

Joe Bass | Apple Autonomous Driving Engineering Management

Joe Bass joined Apple in January 2015 and has served on the Apple self-driving car project for 6 years. He is currently the Project Manager for Apple’s Autonomous Driving Systems Engineering.

Before Apple, Joe held positions at Xilinx, Ubicom, and Google.

Nirali Shah | Apple Automotive Engineering Management

Nirali is an Apple veteran who joined the company in 2009. She is an expert in wireless communication and is currently the Project Manager for Apple Automotive Engineering.

Rolf Toft | Apple Autonomous Driving Software

Rolf is an expert in Apple’s autonomous driving vision and image processing and robot frameworks. He joined Apple prior to the initial release of the iPhone in 2007 and was responsible for Apple’s media system. In September 2017, Rolf transferred to the Apple Automotive Department as the Senior Director of Autonomous Driving Software.

Looking at the coverage areas of these Apple experts, Apple’s product strategy for cars is 100% aligned with new generation car companies such as Tesla, NIO, XPeng, and IDEAL. Their strategy is to build electric self-driving cars powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.As a latecomer, Apple’s advantages largely lie in talent density, efficient organizational management, and abundant cash reserves.

Judging from the Apple Car management team that was unveiled today, Apple Car is worth looking forward to.

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.