Will There Be A Little Aston Martin In Apple Car’s DNA?

by Hansen 19 April, 2016, 11:04 am 318 Views

Chris Porritt, the guy who was behind the One-77 supercar and the DB9 during his term at Aston Martin, and the guy who was previously worked for Tesla Motors and produced the Model S, the Model X, and the recently revealed Model 3, will be working for Apple on ‘special projects.’ Special projects is basically the catchall category that houses Project Titan, or more widely known as Apple’s electric car program. There are no details of the car itself at this point, although there has been some glaring suspicion that it’s currently disguised as an Apple Maps Ford Transit Van.

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According to Electrek, Apple has hired the former Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering and the former Aston Martin Chief Engineer. Porritt’s expertise has been in vehicle dynamics, vehicle architecture and vehicle packaging, critical skill sets necessary in the development of a proper road going car that Apple, a computer technology company, sorely needs.

Before moving to Silicon Valley, Porritt was a key engineer in the UK automotive industry. He started as an intern at Land Rover in 1987 and rose to the role of Principal Engineer in Vehicle Dynamics by 1997. The engineer then went to work for Aston Martin where he held a Chief Engineer role until 2013, when he joined Tesla as Vice President of Vehicle Engineering.

At Aston Martin, Porritt was credited with making some of the company’s most iconic vehicles in recent years, including the One-77 supercar, V12 Zagato and Aston Martin DB9.

We can confirm that some senior Apple engineers will be reporting directly to Porritt, including Product Development Engineering Director, Albert Golko, who until last year was working for the iPhone group and now on unspecified products. Emery Sanford is also said to report directly to Porritt now. Sanford is a prolific engineer named in dozens of Apple’s patents and who often worked directly with Zadesky, the exec believed to have been in charge of Project Titan until earlier this year.

[ads2]Elon Musk has previously nicknamed Apple as ‘Tesla Graveyard’ as they pickup fired Tesla engineers. This move by Porritt suggests that working under Apple may have a bigger payoff than working for the company that has introduced electric cars to the mainstream.