Tesla Head Autopilot HW Jumps to Amazon’s Zoox, Shaking up Self-Driving Ambitions

Zheng Gao, who led Tesla’s Autopilot HW engineering for eight years, has joined Amazon’s Zoox. His departure comes as Tesla pushes promises of hands-free driving, while Zoox expands robotaxi testing in California, signaling a major leadership shift in the rapidly evolving autonomous vehicle industry.

Tesla Autopilot Hardware Leader Marks a New Chapter

Zheng Gao has been employed at Tesla for more than eight years, and most recently, he has served as the leader of the Autopilot hardware engineering department for the past three years.

On his LinkedIn profile, he provided clarification regarding his role:

“Managing the Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Engineering, Display Engineering and Camera Engineering teams for Low-voltage Electronics Systems.”

Driving Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD Innovation

It was his responsibility to build the hardware that is responsible for the operation of Tesla's Autopilot and FSD capabilities.

Before Gao took on the post of head engineer at Tesla, he worked for Apple for ten years, during which time he was responsible for a great deal of electronic design.

Zoox Welcomes Tesla's Former Autopilot Leader

Amazon-owned Zoox, a business that specializes in autonomous vehicles, has made the announcement that it has hired Gao for a similar prominent role within the company.

Gao's departure from Tesla comes at a crucial juncture, as the manufacturer asserts that it is on the verge of achieving unsupervised self-driving capabilities in the coming year. However, CEO Elon Musk has asserted that this is the case every year for the past six years.

Zoox's Progress Highlights Self-Driving Competition

On the other hand, Zoox has recently announced the start of its robotaxi service in San Francisco and has made great improvement in the number of miles between disengagements in its test program in the state of California.

It is not uncommon for individuals to leave their jobs for a variety of reasons, and Gao undoubtedly had a successful tenure at Tesla after eight years of service.

However, if you truly believe that Tesla is on the edge of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world—that is, the ability to enable millions of robotaxi vehicles—then it is a little unusual to be departing at this moment. Electrek makes this point.