Elon Musk is fine with Apple entering the car business — more engineers for Tesla to poach

A report earlier this year said Apple has launched a major project (Project Titan) to build an iCar, putting it in competition with Elon Musk’s Tesla. Nobody knows if that Wall Street Journal report was true, but Musk wouldn’t mind if it were.

Rumors around the Apple car report said that Apple had actively been poaching people from Tesla. But Musk thinks his company has actually taken more employees from Apple.

In comments made after Tesla’s earnings report Wednesday, Musk had this to say:

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.

The WSJ report said “hundreds of employees” working on Project Titan, which CEO Tim Cook reportedly green-lit a year ago. The project could end up involving as many as 1,000 Apple employees, said the WSJ, citing unnamed sources familiar with the project.

The story came just a few hours after a Financial Times story saying that Apple was actively recruiting engineers with automotive experience.

Hat tip: 9to5Mac