Luigi Taraborrelli. You may not know him, and yet this Italian engineer has a lot to do with the design and conception of the latest Lamborghini flagships. Head of R&D for chassis and dynamics for the bull manufacturer’s vehicles, the interested party seems to have been poached by Apple and assigned to the electric vehicle project (aka Project Titan) concocted in increasingly relative secrecy by the California giant. As pointed out The Register, Luigi Taraborrelli has notably worked on the Lamborghini Urus, Huracan and Aventador. He was also at work on many models launched in limited series by the transalpine manufacturer.
At this time, neither Apple nor Luigi Taraborrelli would like to comment on the recruitment rumors emanating from Bloomberg. We do know, however, that while his last known position was based in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Lamborghini’s headquarters in Italy, his last location on LinkedIn places him somewhere in San Francisco Bay… not far from a certain town in Cupertino, where Apple is headquartered.
Apple is stocking up on talent to shape its iCar
It should also be remembered that this recruitment, if confirmed, would not be a first. Earlier this year, and still according to Bloomberg, Apple also recruited Desi Ujkashevic, former chief engineer at Ford. We also know that Apple has already hired former engineers from Tesla, but also from Rivian, BMW and Mercedes. Another interesting element, one of the responsibilities of Luigi Taraborrelli at Lamborghini was to develop rules » confidentiality for prototype testing activities « . A skill that Apple would undoubtedly take advantage of.
Anyway, in September 2021, Apple would have placed Kevin Lynch (its Vice President of Technology), in charge of Project Titan. According to Bloomberg, the latter would have replaced Doug Field after his departure from Ford, and would have taken the opportunity to redirect the Apple Car (or iCar) project in order to move from a partially autonomous electric vehicle to a fully autonomous car project. It is not known at this stage where exactly Apple is in the development of this vehicle, but some rumors evoke a first presentation in 2025.
