Report: Apple Hires Porsche Racing Exec

Apple Inc. has hired Alexander Hitzinger, a former Porsche AG executive who organized the sports car company’s successful effort to win the Le Mans racing championship in 2015 and 2016 according to Manager Magazin.

At Porsche, Hitzinger set up an organizational structure and development team of some 150 people that developed the company’s 919 hybrid race car from scratch.

The reported move to Apple revives speculation that the company’s secretive Project Titan effort to develop a self-driving electric car has returned to its original goal. Recent reports indicated the company had dropped plans for an entire car and had refocused on creating software to control autonomous-driving systems.

Neither Apple nor Hitzinger confirm he has joined the computer company. But Reuters notes that Hitzinger’s LinkedIn profile says he left Porsche in March and became an engineering executive a month later at a an unnamed technology company in the San Francisco Bay area.