Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk says Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) isn’t a serious electric threat, telling German newspaper Handelsblatt that Apple hires from Tesla are failures.
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It’s no secret that Apple and Tesla are vying for each other’s engineers, and Musk himself said in May that attrition rates swing in Tesla’s favor by a ratio of five to one.
“Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?”, Musk said.
Earlier this year, the two companies were effectively engaged in a “poaching war” whereby Tesla had hired at least 150 employees from Apple, the latter of which went to great efforts to try and lure them back under the wing of Tim Cook.
On the concept of Apple building a auto at all, he agreed it was “the next logical thing”, for the iPhone giant. “A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.” he said. However, Musk cautions that cars are far more complex than smartphones and smartwatches.
The two companies have previously battled over staff, while speculation has also circulated about Apple acquiring Tesla with its massive cash reserves.
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The Apple vehicle, rumoured to be under development through the firm’s secretive Project Titan, is expected to arrive in 2019 and to be sold at a cost of £36,000.
