Tesla loses its head of Autopilot HW engineering to Amazon’s self-driving effort

baua

Tesla loses its head of Autopilot HW engineering to Amazon’s self-driving effort


Tesla has lost its long-time head of Autopilot hardware engineering to Amazon’s self-driving company, Zoox.

Zheng Gao has been at Tesla for more than 8 years and for the last three, he has been the head of Autopilot hardware engineering.

He elaborated on his role on his LinkedIn profile:

Managing the Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Engineering, Display Engineering and Camera Engineering teams for Low-voltage Electronics Systems.

He was in charge of designing the hardware that powers Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD features.

Prior to his leading engineering role at Tesla, Gao spent a decade at Apple, and he has been behind many electronic designs.

Zoox, a self-driving company owned by Amazon, has announced that it hired Gao for a similar leading role at the company.

Gao is leaving Tesla at a critical time as the automaker claims it is about to achieve unsupervised self-driving next year – although CEO Elon Musk has claimed that every year for the last 6 years.

On the other hand, Zoox has recently made significant progress in miles between disengagement in its test program in California and announced the launch of its robotaxi service in San Francisco.

Electrek’s Take

People come and go from companies for many different reasons and Gao certainly had a good run at Tesla after 8 years.

That said, it is a bit strange to be leaving now if you really believe that Tesla is on the verge of the biggest value creation of all time: enabling millions of robotaxi vehicles.

Of course, many people believe that Tesla can’t enable unsupervised self-driving on its vehicles.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

MOD Easy 3 e-bike hits new ,159 low in Holiday sale, Segway EVs 60% off, Samsung Bespoke AI Combo saves ,598, more

We’ve got three big Holiday sales for today’s Green Deals, with MOD’s savings event offering…

Kia confirms the electric Tasman pickup we’ve been waiting for is coming soon

It’s official: The all-electric Kia pickup truck is on its way. Although we had a…

These cities rank highest in the world for urban mobility

Photo by KEHN HERMANO on Pexels.com Walkability, electrified transport, free public EV charging – cities…