Oliver Haslam on May 26, 2022, 12:35 am

Apple Car Project Loses Another Key Engineer To Rival Company Six Months After Arriving

The Apple Car project continues to lurch from one problem to another after a new report claimed that it has lost another key engineer just months after they joined the company.

Writing for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman says that Christopher (CJ) Moore has now left Apple just months after arriving, moving on to a new role at autonomous driving outfit Luminar.

Moore was previously employed at Tesla and was part of the company’s Autopiliot team.

Moore, who had joined Apple in August, will lead Luminar’s software team to develop autonomous safety features integrated with its lidar, or laser sensors, the auto-parts company said in a statement Wednesday. Luminar shares jumped as much as 8.2% and were trading up 4.8% at 12:09 p.m. in New York.

Apple has suffered various losses of talent over the years and is thought to have seen the Apple Car project switch management multiple times. It isn’t clear exactly why the project is finding it so difficult to retain engineers.

It is still unclear exactly what the Apple Car project is, however. While some have suggested that Apple will one day launch its own autonomous electric vehicle, it was previously thought that it intended to produce the software and hardware required for such a thing and then have other companies implement it in their own vehicles. Whatever the plan, losing key engineers is unlikely to help Apple bring anything to market.