Apple has hired Ulrich Kranz, a former BMW executive, and the recently departed CEO and co-founder of EV startup Canoo. As first reported by Bloomberg, Ulrich Kranz will work on the Silicon Valley behemoth’s electric car under Doug Field, the former Tesla executive who runs the day-to-day operations of the project, which is codenamed “Project Titan”.
The executive helped launch BMW’s all-electric i3 hatchback and hybrid i8 sports car. Just after he left the German automaker in 2016, he and his fellow BMW executive, Stefan Krause were tapped to help turn around struggling EV startup Faraday Future. They clashed with Faraday Future’s founder then, and in 2017, they left and formed Canoo.
Kranz now finds himself near the top of a very large team inside Apple which is working on an electric, autonomous vehicle. Apple started this project in 2014, but the project has to go through multiple revisions, with the company at one point focusing only on developing autonomous technology. But over the last year, the company has shifted back to try to develop a vehicle and reportedly was in talks with multiple automakers as well as battery companies like China’s CATL.
Ulrich Kranz was just among the top executives who left Canoo over the last year. Krause and was Canoo’s first CEO. Canoo’s chief financial officer and its chief lawyer also left this year following the startup’s merger with SPAC. As The Verge first reported late last year, Kranz’s contract with Canoo was renegotiating as a part of the SPAC merger.
So far, we’ve discussed that Apple hired former BMW and Faraday Future executive Ulrich Kranz to its EV team. So this was the latest report that we’ve got. We’ll keep you updated regarding this in the future as well. Till then stay tuned for further updates.