Tesla Hires Apple Engineer to Run Development

Cars and Drivers

Published: October 25, 2013 6:40 am

In its short lifespan, Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) always has been an odd company. The idiosyncrasies of its management have been offset by the success of its product. The rock star status of CEO Elon Musk has helped the company build its market value to $21 billion, an absurd amount given that the manufacturer only sells a few thousand cars a quarter. Musk has added to his reputation as a wild card by hiring an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) hardware executive to run product development. It goes without saying, a car is not a Mac, which makes the move inappropriate.

Tesla announced:

[It] has hired Doug Field to be its Vice President of Vehicle Programs, responsible for driving development of new vehicles. Doug is an accomplished leader and engineer of innovative, high-technology products, most recently serving as Vice President of Mac Hardware Engineering at Apple. Doug led the development of many new products at Apple including the latest MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac.

At least Field worked at Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) a very long time ago, though Ford is a car manufacturer never admired for its design or revolutionary style. Field’s legacy is not one that makes him a sane candidate for a job the existence of which is not sane either.

The task to improve on Tesla’s first car, the Tesla S, will be impossible. It won every automotive industry award that the industry and buyers care about. The new Tesla Model X is only a crossover knock-off of the flagship product. Musk said he will make more affordable models, and ones that will go further on a single battery charge, but those modest changes are too small to be the platform for an entirely new car.

Field was able to help the Mac evolve several times, but the Mac is nothing more than a piece of consumer hardware. Changes in the Mac kept Apple in the PC game. But Field was surrounded by a group of geniuses, not the least of which were Steve Jobs and renowned designer Jonathan Ive. Musk may be a clever businessman and designer, but he has never created or built machines that can touch what Jobs, Ive and Apple’s software engineers built. Field was not a part of the teams that created Apple’s truly revolutionary products — the iPhone and the iPad.

Field may think he can transfer his success at Apple to Tesla. However, there is no evidence his skills were ever extraordinary, and he will no longer be part of a remarkable team.

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