Apple Poaching Auto Engineers to Build Battery Division | Hacker News Reader

Apple Poaching Auto Engineers to Build Battery Division

nytimes.com

81 pointsantr45 comments

What if the whole deal behind all of this media stuff is just that mainstream journalists have figured out that iOS requires software engineers, and hardware engineers, but they can't wrap their head around the idea that iOS also requires battery engineers?

I'm not saying Apple isn't making a car. I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool if they were. I'm just saying that if you're at all familiar with the history of how the media has always interacted with Apple - if you read Daring Fireball, for instance - then something that mind-bogglingly stupid might actually seem completely typical, in context.

There is definitely a bias in the media to write the most interesting story, even if it is less plausible.

Having a car in the works is more interesting than needing better batteries for existing/announced product lines. Much better batteries would be a strong advantage for apple watch, for example.

An anecdote: I recently went to a conference where a senior member of Foster+Partners, the architecture firm close to Apple (the studio behind Apple's new HQ, many new stores), presented the design for an autonomous vehicle, which resembles more the "Apple minivan" concept that is being mentioned by the press, here is that part of the presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=14m32s

I think the minivan concept makes a lot of sense. The demographic that is likely to own a minivan is likely to have their own garage, which makes charging no hassle. A family with a minivan most likely has a second car they could use for long-distance driving, making range anxiety less of a problem. And they are likely to have the disposable income to invest in an electric car in the first place.

I imagine Apple would be planning something closer to a taxi service. From that perspective a minivan makes a lot of sense because it is a common and versatile format for a cab.

Also, autonomous cars should be large enough to lie down in ;-)

The size certainly makes sense, if driverless technology turns cars into mobile living rooms.

If you're not driving, the entire "sporty" side of the styling and image are out the window. Limos aren't "sporty" and no-one cares. They care that the limo is comfortable and luxurious.

I would add that an Airstream-like space is a lot closer to a good idea here than 'minivan.' In fact, you don't have to go too far back to see how much a few Apple people like that shape http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/null-n09...

Apple is smart to be grabbing A123 engineers. While people seem to remember A123 for its auto pursuits, it also produced batteries for things like tools from Black & Decker.

The problem with cars was that no auto manufacturer wanted to make themselves dependent on a single source for batteries. If someone built a car around A123's batteries, that put them in a bad position. If A123 had difficulty producing the volume needed, there wasn't an alternative. Similarly, it would give A123 incredible pricing power at the end of the contract term.

For a company like Black & Decker, they could offer a premium tool line based on the batteries, but they would still be selling lower-cost tools with less battery life or more weight. With a vehicle, altering the range or weight is a much bigger deal.

If Apple can increase the power density of the batteries in iPhones or MacBooks, that's a big win for them. "Solving" transportation is a very attractive problem and everyone seems to want that. But better batteries have much easier applications. Apple may be working on a vehicle, but if Apple can increase its battery power density by even 30% that gives them a huge advantage in their core markets (phones, tablets, and laptops). That's a much more modest increase than A123. If Apple's battery efforts work well in their current devices, one can see how an electric car might eventually happen. But hiring people from A123 can directly help the markets where Apple makes so much money today. Maybe electric cars are in Apple's future, but even if they aren't, batteries definitely are.

I'm pretty skeptical about the Apple Car rumor (Jean-Louis Gassee wrote a nice debunking piece http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/02/15/the-fantastic-apple-car...), but when the NY Times suggests that Apple specializes in mobility and electronics it seems to make the car seem more likely.

In "Being Digital" Negroponte made the insightful assertion that the wired / wireless world was flipping -- TVs were becoming wired while phones and computers were becoming wireless (TVs have kind of flipped again since then). The next shift is that we may ourselves become unshackled from our homes.

In City, Clifford Simak has people living in flying houses and they simply park where-ever they want to live for a given period. Well, flying is impractical, but mobile seems to be coming.

Battery technology is the #1 problem pervading tech right now. From robots to iPads, we need about 10x battery storage for the same weight as we have now.

Having said that, it's shame to see all of this work in cars. I get the feeling that Apple is just going for a huge "me too" play, hoping to make the car into the next iPad.

But if that's what it takes for us to finally see progress? Count me in.

How are cars less important than robots or computing devices?

Poor battery capacity is one of the biggest reasons for slow adoption of electric vehicles.

Improve batteries and you will drastically improve EV sales. Combine that with Apple and Tesla's investments in solar, this means reduced pollution.

Surely, cutting emissions and weaning the world off its oil addiction is more important than robotics and iPads?

Since the iphone all Apple seems capable of doing is playing the "me too" card. Their innovations have stalled and they've gone from being that awesome company that makes great dev/design laptops and really cool smart phones into Microsoft 2.0. Tim Cook == Steve Balmer??

That's pretty harsh and also ignores how Apple creates its products. It didn't just see that everyone was doing smart watches and decided to hop on the band wagon like Samsung or LG. They have been building and designing a product they thought would actually do well in the market. They do purposefully try to become the first to announce just because they can.

The iPad was considered a flop by every news outlet when it was announced. Mocked openly about how stupid it was and how no one would buy it.

They aren't producing as many "market breaking" products, but I am sure they are working on them. Apple needs to be careful to release products that do very well, as sales that would be excellent for most any other company are considered a failure for Apple.

That's not at all to say they haven't been leaving behind a lot of old products. I will be very happy if IOS 9 is focused on debugging the software and improving the overall experience. I just hope the next os x will be doing that as well.

They did hop on the phablet band wagon which i believe was mocked just like the iPad.

The best ever quarter Apple has had definitely was helped by hopping on the phablet band wagon, started by Samsung. I remember the universal mockery most reviewers had when it was introduced.

Also Samsung (Samsung Chemical) has been involved with battery business for a long time but they recently got rid of it.

Excellent point about the importance of batteries, especially re robots. If Apple's building a car, what that really means is that they're building a robot.

Cars are currently sized for human occupants. A robot car could be almost any size. In the first Star Wars, there's a tiny robot car which scuttles around the Death Star. The future probably holds millions of those things.

Technically, this is a robot car:

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/incredible-hospital-robot-savin...

The key thing to remember is that Tesla's battery competence has its foundation in their work with Matsushita/Panasonic - who are supplying the tech for the battery farm in Arizona. The main reason is that manufacturing and QA of the battery is critical. It will be interesting to see if Apple will work with Panasonic in this space.

That said, Apple of course may be able to sell at higher margin and be able to endure higher manufacturing cost.

So is it illegal for companies to approach people about different job opportunities? Or is it the tactics used by Apple that give A123 the right to sue them?

No, poaching is legal. Apple also got sued for no-poaching agreements with other tech companies.

I think poaching is good in many cases, since hiring someone away from their current company usually means a higher price for their services. This means that you're moving developers to where they're most productive for the market as a whole.

The problem is this:

> in violation of their employment agreements

It's very possible to break an employment contract by leaving to go work somewhere else. These might not hold up in court (depends on the state), or Apple might just pay whatever fine the court levies.

That explains why A123 are suing their former employees, as they individually had contractual agreements. It doesn't explain why A123 are suing Apple, since they apparently had no contractual relationship.

IANAL, but my guess would be that the case is based on Apple allegedly inducing one of the A123 engineers to recruit other engineers into Apple. I don't know if that is actionable, though.

According to [1] the action is in the Massachusetts District Court, Boston. Looks like the details are paywalled inside Pacer.

[1] http://dockets.justia.com/docket/massachusetts/madce/1:2015c...

PACER does charge, but if your usage is less than $15 for the quarter, you don't have to pay. So, if you're just curious about a few things, you can often get them without paying.

Your often not allowed to induce people to break contracts. It stems from Lumeley v. Gye and has a lot of caviots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumley_v_Gye

When a big company hires your employees en masse to work on the exact same thing they were working on that feels morally wrong, even if it is legal. There is transfer of IP involved here.

> So is it illegal for companies to approach people about different job opportunities?

No, the opposite.

> Or is it the tactics used by Apple that give A123 the right to sue them?

The text seems to indicate this is related to some sort of non-compete clause (" The engineers jumped ship to pursue similar programs at Apple, in violation of their employment agreements"). I don't think it would fly in CA (where NCC requirements are rather stringent) but no idea for Mass.

Massachusetts is starting to get a clue about how much this cripples their high tech sector, but as of yet I believe they've failed to pass any reforms.

In these sorts of cases, it's a race to the courtroom. If the non-CA based company wins, they get to enforce their non-competes against those who signed them, to the extent they're reasonable.

Rather than evidence of developing a car, one boring possibility: Apple is trying to develop large-scale battery systems to more directly harness its solar farms' ability to power its datacenters.

Or: large-scale battery systems in cars have innovations that might be scaled down for use in computers, phones, and watches.

I'd much prefer the latter...

"Around June 2014, Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers tasked with leading some of the company's most critical projects..."

June 2014 is right around the time of Tesla's "All Our Patents Belong To You" announcement: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-yo...

> A search of LinkedIn profiles turns up more than 60 former Tesla employees now employed by Apple.

I can't tell - is this a lot or hardly anything?

And, more importantly, how many of those Former Tesla Employees are actually Former Apple Employees who became Tesla Employees, and then decided they would rather go back to work for Apple?

Are you suggesting that they are sent intentionally to join and know the future plans?

It could simply be a case of disillusionment at Tesla. Also Apple employees are known to leave Apple, either to start a company or for a sabbatical but then go back to working at Apple once they're done.

Nope - I'm just suggesting it's not as big a deal if a former Apple employee decided to return back to Apple, than if a someone who had never worked for Apple went from Tesla to Apple.

There was a news story a couple of days ago about how Tesla has hired away 120 Apple engineers over the past few years. Can't find the link right now.

In terms of product expertise, I find a lot of similarities between Apple and Tesla. They have similar souls. Musk is a messianic figure, like Jobs, and Tesla is nearly as obsessed about design as Apple

Here's the discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9064196

Personally, I love to see this back-and-forth poaching. Cross-pollination of ideas can be a big boost to innovation, and if it fuels some wage growth then all the better.

From the article: A123 Systems is a pioneering industrial lithium-ion battery maker, which was backed by a $249 million U.S. government grant. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and has been selling off assets.

So, they take taxpayer money, go bankrupt, and then attempt to block former employees from getting jobs?

That part stood out to me as well. A123 doesn't come out of this one looking very good at all.

Why is it when a sports team goes after another player, it us a trade. But when a company goes after an employee, it is poaching? Yeah I get that the sports guy is under contract. But the word "poaching" has a negative conotation and it makes them look like a big bad evil company. When in reality it is a win for the employee.

It's considered poaching to hire engineers from a company that's been bankrupt for two years?

It was a Chapter 11 reorganization, not a Chapter 7 liquidation, and the major parts of the company were bought by two others.

This is pretty rich, coming from A123, since they stole their ideas from Professor Goodenough.

No Apple Watch jokes? I'm disappointed in you people.

'Poaching' makes workers sound like slaves owned by a company.

People are not owned by companies, it's the other way around.

They are not illegally hired, so poaching is incorrectly used.

"Poaching" in this context does not imply illegality.

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