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Elon Musk says Apple poaches Tesla's rejects

Apple is reportedly getting into the electric car business, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn't seem too worried.

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In a recent interview with Musk, the German newspaper Handelsblatt asked him about Apple poaching Tesla employees to work on their secret car project, which is called "Titan."

Musk acknowledged that Apple had hired some Tesla employees, but only ones that his company had fired. 

Elon Musk - Sun Valley
Elon Musk. Getty / Scott Olson

"They have hired people we've fired," Musk reportedly told the German newspaper. "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." 

Of course, Tesla isn't the only car company the Apple has poached employees from. The tech giant has also recently hired former employees from BMW, Volkswagen, and Ford Motors. 

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Musk said that he thinks a car for Apple is "the logical next step," but he added that a car is a much more complex machine than what Apple currently produces. 

"It's good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches," he told the newspaper. 

 Tesla's future competition won't just come from Apple. All of the major automakers are jumping into the electric car space in a big way and rushing to bring their more efficient all-electric vehicles to market. 

Last month at the International Motor Show in Frankfurt, Porsche revealed its new Mission E concept car that that has a range of 310 miles and can charge 80% in just 15 minutes. The company plans to begin production on the new car during the next five years. 

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Audi, which is a subsidiary of Volkswagen, also revealed its latest all-electric vehicle at the show. It's crossover, called the e-tron quattro, has a range of 310 miles on a single charge and will go into production in 2018. 

The growing competition, though, doesn't seem to worry Musk. It's actually part of his larger plan. 

“The reason that we are doing Tesla is trying to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport, to have there be more electric cars on the road and to that end we actually open sourced all of our patents. So we said any car 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

"For us we are very philosophically motivated, we care about the advancement of electric vehicles because we think unless there is sustainable transport the future is going to be terrible.”

Elon Musk Tesla Apple
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