Elon Musk: Apple hires the engineers Tesla fires
Elon Musk has lashed out at Apple, suggesting the company is the “Tesla graveyard” which hires his company's rejects.
The outspoken chief executive and billionaire investor has hit back at suggestions Apple has been pinching Tesla’s engineers as it pushes into the car sector, saying in an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt that Apple is where you go “if you don’t make it at Tesla”:
They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the “Tesla Graveyard”. If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.
Apple has showed more than a few signs of gearing up for an iCar recently. Eyeing up rivals like Tesla and Google over electric and driverless cars, the tech giant has bought a mapping company, and begun recruiting experts on vehicle design.
But Musk claims to be far from worried by Apple’s push into cars. “Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?” he said, adding:
It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches.
You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.
Tesla recently unveiled its hotly anticipated Model X SUV after years of delays, and the $132,000 electric car sold out immediately after launch.