A recent report from Bloomberg reveals that senior director Jaime Waydo, previously working on car safety in the Project Titan team, as well as Benjamin Lyon, one of the first engineers that joined Apple’s EV unit, left the iPhone maker in February for key roles at other companies.
Waydo, for example, is now Chief Technology Officer at Cavnue, while Lyon has been appointed Chief Engineer and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Astra.
A third departure took place a few weeks ago when Dave Scott, the leader of the robotics team working on the Apple Car, decided to leave the company and take over the president and CEO role at health care company Hyperfine.
Apple hasn’t officially announced these departures, though some of these engineers, including Jaime Waydo, have already updated their LinkedIn profiles to confirm they’re now working for other companies. Waydo revealed on her personal LinkedIn account that she’s the Chief Technology Officer of Cavnue since February 2021 after previously working for Apple for 2 years and 9 months.
At this point, it’s not yet known what impact all these departures could have on Apple’s car expansion plans, but some analysts believe the company could at least confirm plans to launch an EV as soon as this summer.
While this is rather unlikely, given Apple typically keeps such details completely secret until the official announcements, several people close to the matter said the company is close to signing a manufacturing deal with a joint venture formed by Magna and LG.