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Ulrich Kranz:
More electric car expertise is hardly possible - now the former BMW manager is hiring at Apple
Photo: Canoo
Apple underpins its ambitions in the auto sector with the engagement of a former BMW manager who most recently ran an electric vehicle startup.
Ulrich Kranz
(62) is now working for Apple, confirmed the iPhone company on Friday night the tech blogs "The Verge" and "TechCrunch", without giving any further details. According to information from the Bloomberg financial service, Kranz will
report
to
Doug Field
.
Field heads the Titan electric car project at Apple. The Apple veteran returned from Tesla in August 2018. There he led the development of the Model 3. Apple's auto development is spearheaded by ex-Tesla top executives. The German engineer
Michael Schwekutsch
and the British
Steve MacManus had also
joined Field in
recent years from the innermost leadership
circle
around Elon Musk
. Kranz is now apparently supposed to support this Tesla trio in the development.
At BMW, Kranz was one of the developers of the i3 electric car and the i8 sports car. After that, he first worked for the electric car startup Faraday Future and then founded
the electric car start-up Canoo
with
Stefan Krause
, which actually wanted to sell an electric minibus as a subscription model. Kranz had Canoo floated on the stock exchange last December via a SPAC deal. But at the beginning of the year he was ousted from the company when Tony Aquila, chairman of the board of directors, took power there. Canoo now wants to develop an electric pick-up.
For years, Apple has been developing technology for autonomous driving and testing SUVs from the Toyota luxury brand Lexus that have been converted into robot cars on public roads.
At the beginning of the car project, which had been running for more than five years, Apple also showed prototypes to suppliers, but after that it was mainly geared towards software.
Last year, Apple had stepped up its efforts in the development of the electric car again significantly and had been looking for more staff for its development team.
According to insider reports, Apple's electric car is said to be crammed with driver assistance systems designed to enable highly automated driving.
According to insiders, it is unlikely that the Apple Car will be able to drive completely autonomously, as originally intended.
rs, rei / DPA