Autonomous Self Driving, News

Apple hires senior engineer from Waymo for self-driving car effort

Apple has just hired Jaime Waydo from Waymo for their self-driving car technology team. Not to be left behind in the race to create production-ready self-driving car, Apple is getting the right people for the job.

Jaime Waydo was previously an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before joining Alphabet, the parent company of Google and Waymo. At Waymo, Jaime oversaw systems engineering, ensuring hardware and software work well together. She also helped make key decisions about when to remove human safety drivers from the company’s test fleet in Arizona.

Apple has always been quiet about their self-driving efforts, with rumours started that Apple initially wanted to build cars with self-driving technology and then decided to scale back to focus on the technology itself. Apple has been using Lexus vehicles to test their technology.

Only recently, Apple just launched the PAIL program which is a partnership with Volkswagen to roll out a self-driving van service to shuttle Apple employees between Palo Alto and Infinite Loop.

“We wish Jaime well in her next endeavor,” Waymo said in a statement to Reuters.