Tesla CEO Elon Musk has levelled several withering insults at Apple, incorporating both its e-car plans and its recent innovations.
Speaking in Berlin recently, Musk was asked if Tesla was worried over Apple’s recent hiring of some of its own most important engineers.
“Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired,” Musk told Handelsblatt. “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.”
This prompted the interviewer to ask Musk, whose company had recently launched the Tesla Model X to considerable acclaim, whether he was taking Apple’s e-car ambitions seriously. Musk took the opportunity to offer a slightly more gracious response, but framed it with more stinging insults.
“Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? (laughs) No, seriously: It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction,” said Musk.
Related: Elon Musk’s 5 craziest tech ideas for the future
Musk also cautioned Apple that “cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches,” and pointed out that you can’t just go to Foxconn and ask them to build you a car.
He accepts that “for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation,” but ended his assessment by claiming that “a new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.” Ouch.
See how useful we found the Apple Watch to be in the following video:
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
