Elon Musk says that Apple only hires Tesla’s worst engineers

While the chat centered mostly around Tesla‘s issues in Germany and Elon’s hope that the German government will start handing out the kind of tax breaks that he’s getting back on USA soil, the interviewer apparently couldn’t help asking about “The Apple vehicle”. Musk took the opportunity to offer a slightly more gracious response, but framed it with more stinging insults.

The sick burns continued when Musk was asked if he took Apple seriously as a competitor in the automotive market. “So we said any auto company can use our technology, it’s no problem, they don’t even have to pay a fee to us”, Musk said last month in an interview with the Danish new site Borsen. It was something that was so big that 50 of Apple’s engineers had reportedly jumped ship, leaving Tesla to join the Apple initiative.

Of course, just because he doesn’t hate Apple doesn’t mean he love Apple either. “But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches”, he told the newspaper. If anything, Tesla is typically the company luring over talented engineers and executives, not the other way around.

Musk has previously accused Apple of trying to poach Tesla staff, in a February interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

In a separate tweet Musk refers to the Apple Watch and says that Jony Ive, the chief design officer of Apple, has designed the Apple Watch well but he does not find the functionality compelling.

So, when asked whether Apple’s move to hire “some of Tesla’s most important engineers” (like former Tesla Motors Autopilot Firmware Manager Jamie Carlson) worries Musk, he basically laughed in the reporter’s face.

In Apple’s defense, as much as Musk has been vocal about Apple’s attempts at recruiting Tesla talent, Tesla isn’t exactly squeaky clean when it comes to hiring strictly homegrown talent. He explained that he didn’t find Apple’s new pencil and iPad upgrades very inspirational in comparison to the advances Tesla has made in the automobile industry.