Apple's Car Project Leader Is Leaving

The veteran Apple executive overseeing the company’s not-so-stealth electric car project is leaving the company.

Steve Zadesky, a former Ford Motor engineer who has overseen the car project for the last two years, and who tripled the size of Apple’s automotive team, is leaving the company for personal reasons, according to The Wall Street Journal. A person familiar the matter confirmed the departure.

Zadesky spent nearly 17 years at Apple, where he built and led the teams for the first iPod, first iPhone, all subsequent iPhones and iPods and hundreds of Apple accessories, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Apple declined comment.

The company has refused to confirm that it is working on a car, even as it has embarked on an aggressive hiring spree to bring in executives with experience in the automotive industry and electric batteries.

Chief Executive Tim Cook said the automotive industry is on the verge of “massive change” in an appearance at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJD Live conference this fall, though he stopped short of saying whether the world’s most valuable company would play a role in that transformation.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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