Tesla Motors announced the hiring of Chris Lattner who will be the company’s new Vice President of Autopilot software.

Lattner comes after an 11-year-long stint in Apple, where he was responsible for the creation of Swift, the programming language used in building apps on Apple platforms.

He will replace Jinnah Hosein who served a dual role as he is also SpaceX’s Vice President of Software and now can focus on the aerospace company full-time. Tesla didn’t specify when Lattner is going to start working with them.

Tesla’s move to hire such a high-profile software developer for its Autopilot system reveals the company’s intentions of staying ahead of the growing competition in the self-driving field.

The company has recently started testing the latest version of its autonomous system in the first 1,000 cars that were fitted with the new hardware. This Autopilot 2.0 version will be initially limited for usage at low speeds, as the company wants to gather more data before the system becomes fully available to owners of its newer models.

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