Don’t count Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk among Apple’s legion of fans.
In an interview with German newspaper Handlesblatt, Musk slammed the Cupertino-based company as a “Tesla graveyard,” referring to Apple’s poaching of key employees from Tesla for their own efforts to reportedly build an electric car.
When Musk was asked by the interviewer whether he was worried that the company had hired away some of his “most important engineers,” Musk replied:
“Important engineers? 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.”
Asked if he took Apple seriously as a competitor, Musk laughed and retorted, “Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?”
He added:
“No, seriously: 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.’
This isn’t the first time Musk has poked at Apple about the company’s encroachment on Tesla’s electric car turf. Back on April Fool’s Day of this year, Tesla released a prank announcement that they would be building their own smart watch, the Tesla Model W.
