Elon Musk says he’d love to see Apple release its own car

Tesla is essentially the Apple of the automotive industry, so what happens when Apple releases its own electric vehicle, as the company is rumored to be working on? Well, as far as Elon Musk is concerned, it would be an excellent move, and he welcomes Apple to the automotive industry. Industry analysts, on the other hand, seem to believe that the release of an Apple-branded electric car could do some serious damage to Tesla. 

During electric car maker Tesla’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, company founder and entrepreneur Elon Musk said it would be great to see Apple enter the automotive industry, while allaying concerns that the Cupertino tech giant’s poaching operations posed a threat to his company. Musk’s statement came in response to an analyst question regarding the potential negative effects an “Apple Car” would have on Tesla’s business model. With an unmatched ability to consumerize nascent technologies and reports of engineer poaching, some are concerned Apple’s supposed interest in electric cars could be a major problem for Tesla. “I actually hope Apple gets into the car business, that would be great,” Musk said. As for employee poaching, Musk said Tesla is not seeing significant attrition of engineers to Apple. He offered up a ballpark figure, saying that over the past 12 months Tesla has wooed about five times as many engineers from Apple than the other way around. Earlier this year, Musk said Apple was trying “very hard” to poach Tesla engineers for a secret project, in some cases offering $250,000 signing bonuses and 60 percent raises for the opportunity.