Elon Musk hopes Apple will enter car market, says Tesla is poaching 5x as many employees as Apple

Apple’s car team

Speculation regarding Apple’s plans to build an electric car has been at an all-time over recent months. Earlier this year, we broke down the team that Apple has assembled to work on its car, several members of which were poached from Tesla. In Tesla’s Q1 2015 earnings call, however, CEO Elon Musk commented on Apple’s alleged electric car plans and the poaching war that has been ongoing between the two companies.

Regarding Apple’s plans to build an electric car, Musk said that he “hopes” Apple will enter the car market and that it will be “great” if it does. Musk made similar comments earlier this year when addressing the reports that Apple had approached Tesla about a potential acquisition. Musk, of course, would not comment about specific talks between the two companies.

Musk also today addressed the ongoing poaching war between Tesla and Apple by essentially saying that there isn’t a war, but if there was, Tesla would be winning it. Musk noted that Tesla has not seen any “significant attrition” of engineers to Apple. Tesla, on the other hand, has recruited “five times as many people” from Apple as Apple has from Tesla.

“I certainly hope Apple gets into the car business. That would be great. But we’re not seeing any significant attrition of engineers to Apple, for anything. Cars or otherwise. Anyone can find this out by going on LinkedIn. If you look at the trailing 12 months, Tesla has recruited something like five times as many people from Apple as Apple has from Tesla.”

A report earlier this year claimed that Apple is planning to launch its own car by 2020. Whether or not that turns out to be true remains to be seen, but nevertheless, Apple now has support from one of the brightest minds in the world for its car initiative.