Google just hired away one of Tesla’s leading self-driving car experts.
Robert Rose, a former software engineer for Tesla’s Autopilot program, left the electric car maker in October, just after the launch of the Autopilot system, and joined Google Robotics beginning in November, according to his LinkedIn page.
While the move suggests that Rose may be joining Google to advance its self-driving car efforts, Rose will actually be working on a separate robotics project, according to Business Insider's Jillian D'Onfro.
Though Rose may not be directly competing with Tesla, his departure from the electric car company could not be more ill-timed.
Tesla is making a big effort to ramp up its self-driving car efforts.
In October, the company rolled out its Autopilot system, which enables a number of semi-autonomous features. Since then, CEO Elon Musk has made it clear that he is doubling down the company’s efforts to make Autopilot completely autonomous.
Last week, Musk tweeted that he was looking for “hardcore software engineers” to work on tesla’s Autopilot system.
“Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve full autonomy,” Musk said. “This is super high priority."
It's so important, in fact, that Musk said that he would be doing the interviewing for anyone joining Tesla Autopilot team.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2015
Musk’s expedited efforts to bring the Autopilot system to full autonomy are not surprising considering how many other car makers and tech companies are working to bring the technology to market.
A number of car makers are aiming to have their self-driving technologies at least, in part, ready by 2020.
But for Tesla, developing a fully autonomous system is even more urgent because the people are already pushing Autopilot’s capabilities to the extreme.
While helpful, semi-autonomous driver assistance systems like Autopilot can be dangerous in some regards because people begin to trust the technology a little too much and sometimes forget that it has limited capabilities.
After Autopilot was released, there were a number of videos posted to YouTube of Tesla owners completely taking their hands off the wheels to do other tasks. One man apparently even sat in the back seat of his Tesla while the car drove down a highway.
While Tesla specifically said the technology is not intended to be hands-free, people saw how well it worked an immediately entrusted their lives with it.
This is a problem for Tesla because while there technology is constantly improving and has already helped save some lives, it’s still not foolproof. Bringing the technology to full autonomy will help the company ensure its customers safety, as well as its place as a market leader.
Tech Insider reached out to Tesla for comment and will update if we hear back.
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
