Top gun: Tesla has a new ‘wingman’ on the team working on its Autopilot system – Chris Lattner – who will oversee development of software that will be crucial in its quest to have fully autonomous cars commercially available by around 2020.

TESLA Motors has announced the appointment of former Apple senior developer Chris Lattner as vice-president of its Autopilot software, handing him a key role in bringing the electric vehicle company’s autonomous driving system to full hands-free capability in the coming years.

“Chris’ reputation for engineering excellence is well known,” Tesla said in a statement this week.

“He comes to Tesla after 11 years at Apple where he was primarily responsible for creating Swift, the programming language for building apps on Apple platforms and one of the fastest-growing languages for doing so on Linux.

“Prior to Apple, Chris was lead author of the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, an open-source umbrella project that is widely used in commercial products and academic research today.”

Like many global car-makers, Tesla is working towards fully autonomous vehicles and Mr Lattner will develop the software that works in conjunction with the recent hardware upgrade that prepares its vehicles for “full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver”.

All vehicles produced since October are now fitted with eight surround-view cameras providing 360-degree visibility around the car at up to 250m of range.

The cameras work in conjunction with 12 updated ultrasonic sensors, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the previous system, Tesla says, while a forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data on a redundant wavelength and is said to be capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.

A new computer with what is said to be more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation in also on-board, with the overall result, according to Tesla, providing “a view of the world that a driver alone cannot access, seeing in every direction simultaneously and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses”.

“Self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future,” Tesla said.

“Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.”

Overseas reports indicate that Tesla’s former head of Autopilot programs, Sterling Anderson, has quietly left the company, with no reference made to him in the announcement of Mr Lattner’s appointment.

The company instead gave “a special thanks” to Jinnah Hosein, vice-president of software for SpaceX (the aerospace firm founded by Tesla chief Elon Musk), “who has been serving a dual role as the interim vice-president of Tesla Autopilot software and will now be heading back to SpaceX full-time”.

“We would like to thank Jinnah for the efforts needed to achieve excellence in both roles, David Nister, our vice-president of Autopilot Vision, and the team for their exceptional work in advancing Autopilot,” the company added.

Apple is understood to have recently abandoned plans to build its own autonomous cars.

Mr Lattner is not the first senior Apple executive to join Tesla, with engineering chief Doug Field and global recruitment boss Cindy Nicola also now working with the EV manufacturer.

By Terry Martin