Field Dag (Doug Field)

Field Dag (Doug Field)

Biography

2021: Appointment as Ford Chief Technology Officer

In early September 2021, Ford hired the former head of Apple's automotive division, Doug Field, to be the chief specialist in advanced technology and embedded systems.

Field was vice president of special projects at Apple, where he oversaw the company's work on creating the unmanned electric vehicle Project Titan. He also served as Apple's vice president of hardware development for Mac, but in 2013 left the company and became Tesla's chief engineer, where he helped oversee the problematic development of the Model 3 sedan. In 2018, he left Tesla and returned to Apple.

Field will lead Ford's efforts to develop the next-generation Blue Oval Intelligence technology stack to create smart cars and connected services that improve over time thanks to constant updates. He will report to Ford President and CEO Jim Farley, Ford said in a press release.

It is not yet clear who will take Field's place, although in June 2021 Apple hired Ulrich Krantz, a former BMW executive who worked on the i3 EV electric car and the i8 hybrid sports car to work under Doug Field. Krantz recently resigned as CEO of Canoo, an EV startup he co-founded, and which Apple was interested in acquiring in 2020. According to reports, in December 2020, Apple's efforts to create cars were transferred to the vice president of machine learning and AI, John Giannandrea.

Doug Field joined Ford at a time when the company is steadily increasing its efforts to create electric vehicles, in particular, the Ford F-150 Lightning, a fully electric version of the popular pickup truck, as well as the fully electric Mustang. The company advocates a business plan, which it calls Ford Plus, and intends to create more cars that will be fully connected to the network and can be updated by air, like Tesla. Ford also said Google's Android will be used in the infotainment systems of millions of its cars, starting in 2023.^[1]

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