John Giannandrea, Apple's head of AI, takes over self-driving car project
What you need to know
- John Giannandrea, Apple's head of AI and machine learning, is taking over its self-driving project.
- The move comes as Bob Mansfield fully retires from the company.
Reported by Bloomberg, Apple has now placed John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, in charge of the company's self-driving car project. The news came as Bob Mansfield, Apple's former Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, announced his full retirement.
According to the report, Doug Field, who has run the day-to-day for Project Titan, will continue to do so but now report directly to Giannandrea.
Mansfield has been serving as a part-time consultant to Apple since 2013 but has now handed the reigns of the project over to Giannandrea, who has been leading Apple's machine learning efforts after being in charge of machine learning and search at Google.
Apple has been testing its self-driving technology since 2017, reaching 118 miles before requiring a human to take over the controls in its most recent public testing. While the effort has seen its ups and downs, Tim Cook has called it "a core technology that we view as very important," dispelling rumors that Apple might completely abandon the project.
It is still unclear if Project Titan will take the form of an autonomous car that directly competes with electric vehicle brands like Tesla, or if Apple will develop the underlying technology and make it available to companies in another way.
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Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.