Another high-level Tesla engineering executive has hopped over to Apple. Steve MacManus, who was vice president of engineering at Tesla, is now a senior director at Apple, according to an update on his LinkedIn profile.
Bloomberg was the first to report MacManus had taken the position at Apple. MacManus, whose was in charge of interior and exterior engineering, is the third Tesla executive to leave and take a position at Apple this year. He had been at Tesla since 2015.
His hiring follows two other high-profile moves from Tesla to Apple, including former chief engineer Doug Field and Michael Schwekutsch, who worked on drive systems at the electric automaker.
MacManus has a deep background in industrial design, specifically vehicle interiors and exteriors. Prior to Tesla, MacManus was chief engineer of body interior and exterior of trim and hardware at Aston Martin Lagonda. He was functional manager of seating and restraints at Bentley Motors and also once worked at Jaguar Land Rover.
This latest hire, and the ones before, suggest that Apple’s Project Titan, the company’s not-so-secretive effort to build a self-driving car, might be in the midst of a revival. In January, news emerged that Apple had reassigned 200 employees previously involved in its development.
At the time, an Apple spokesperson said the company had an “incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple,” and explained that some groups were being moved to projects in other parts of the company to support machine learning and other initiatives.
Apple could not be reached for comment. TechCrunch will update the article with any new information.
