Apple Inc. is recruiting experts from the auto industry, a
signal that its efforts to develop an electric car could be gaining
ground.
Doug Betts, who led global quality at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
NV until last year, is now working for the Cupertino, Calif.-based
electronics giant but declined to comment on the position when
reached Monday. Mr. Betts' LinkedIn profile says he joined Apple in
July and describes his title as "Operations-Apple Inc." with a
location in the San Francisco Bay Area but no further
specifics.
Apple declined to comment on the new hire. It's not immediately
clear whether he is part of the company's car initiative or if he
will work on an existing product line.
Along with Mr. Betts, whose expertise points to a desire to know
how to build a car, Apple recently recruited one of the leading
autonomous-vehicle researchers in Europe and is building a team to
work on those systems.
Apple, with nearly $200 billion in cash reserves, has joined
Google Inc. and other nontraditional auto companies in exploring
ways to make systems for vehicles or build entire cars that
increasingly rely on sophisticated software systems to operate.
The interest of tech companies in the auto industry has sparked
a race between Silicon Valley and traditional auto hubs, including
Frankfurt and Detroit, to secure the talent and resources necessary
to compete in a transformed auto industry.
Car-sharing service Uber Technologies Inc. poached 40
researchers from a Carnegie Mellon University program that competed
with a range of auto companies and tech companies. Apple earlier in
the year settled a lawsuit filed by battery maker A123 Systems
claiming the Cupertino company attempted to use A123 employees to
start a battery operation.
More than 17 million light vehicles are expected to be sold in
the U.S. this year and about 85 million are sold annually around
the world. Companies increasingly see cars as a mobile device on
wheels, with billions of dollars in new revenue potential.
Apple has hired hundreds of people to work on an electric-car
project code-named "Titan." Because Apple hasn't publicly
acknowledged the work, it is difficult to gauge how serious its
plans are for building an electric car.
Apple has targeted employees at Tesla to fill out its team
working on the car, according to people familiar with the matter.
On a call with analysts in May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he hoped
that Apple would get into the car business but noted that Tesla had
recruited five times as many employees from Apple as Apple had
poached from Tesla in the previous 12 months.
Earlier this year, Apple hired Paul Furgale a well-regarded
autonomous vehicle researcher in Switzerland, and has begun
recruiting other robotics and machine vision experts to work on a
confidential project.
Mr. Furgale had been deputy director of the Autonomous Systems
Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH. Mr.
Furgale previously had led a European Commission project called
V-Charge that sought to develop self-parking vehicle
technology.
He didn't respond to phone and email messages for comment. A
member of the lab in Switzerland confirmed that he left the
institute to work for Apple but didn't have a contact number for
him.
Mr. Furgale has begun recruiting students and researchers to
work with him. Apple has hired a graduate student studying at the
University of Michigan and has quietly recruited others.
Apple CEO Tim Cook appointed Steve Zadesky to lead the group, a
veteran product designer and former Ford Motor Co. engineer. Mr.
Zadesky was given permission to create a 1,000-person team and
recruit employees from other parts of Apple, people familiar with
the matter said.
Mr. Betts could be the first major automotive executive to join
Apple with experience leveled more at the manufacturing side of the
business.
For nearly two decades, he has worked in product quality and
manufacturing at an auto company, first as a general manager at
Toyota Motor Corp. and later as a vice president at Nissan Motor
Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, now FCA US LLC.
In 2009, when Fiat SpA took over Chrysler, CEO Sergio Marchionne
tapped Mr. Betts to lead the company's quality turnaround, giving
him far-reaching authority over the company's brands and even the
final say on key production launches.
Mr. Betts abruptly left Fiat Chrysler last year to pursue other
interests. The move came less than a day after the car maker's
brands ranked poorly in an influential reliability study.
Write to Christina Rogers at christina.rogers@wsj.com, Mike
Ramsey at michael.ramsey@wsj.com and Daisuke Wakabayashi at
Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com
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