Skip to main content

Elon Musk reveals Apple’s ‘open secret’

apples electric car is an open secret says teslas elon musk tesla
Tesla
Evidence suggesting Apple is in the throes of developing an electric car continues to pile up, though of course the company itself won’t make any official announcement till CEO Tim Cook tootles onto a stage in one. If it ever happens.

Elon Musk, a man who, as head of electric-car maker Tesla, may one day have to face down competition from the tech giant, said on Monday it’s obvious that Apple is knocking something together.

Related Videos

“It’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it,” Musk told the BBC in a rare TV interview, adding that Apple’s car project is “an open secret.”

Musk joked back in October that “if you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple,” and at the same time said the company had “hired people we’ve fired.”

In Monday’s interview, the 44-year-old CEO seemed pretty laid back about the prospect of a company as big as Apple entering the industry, and even welcomed the possibility.

“I encourage more participation, by whoever it is, to create electric vehicles,” he said.

He was even generous enough to suggest Apple would “probably make a compelling electric car,” adding that a move toward developing such a machine seemed like “the obvious thing to do” for the tech firm.

So Musk, for one, is convinced Apple is working on an electric car, and given his position, he’d surely know. His comments came just days after it emerged the Cupertino company recently registered a set of domains, which, if they’re not linked to a car project, suggest someone at the company has a very mischievous sense of humor.

The domains – apple.car, apple.cars, and apple.auto – were all registered in December.

There’s been plenty of claims from “sources with knowledge of the matter” over the last year about the supposed existence of an Apple car, among them a report from the often reliable Wall Street Journal that said the company planned to have an electric car on the road by 2019. As for the look of the motor, and how far it’ll go with self-driving features, the rumor mill looks certain to spin wildly on those matters before the truth is finally revealed.

Editors' Recommendations

Elon Musk: fully loaded Tesla Semi aces 500-mile drive
tesla electric semi truck debut delivery rec

Four days before Tesla delivers its first all-electric Semi truck, company chief Elon Musk has tweeted that a test drive of the new vehicle saw it complete a 500-mile trip loaded to its maximum weight.

“Tesla team just completed a 500-mile drive with a Tesla Semi weighing in at 81,000 lbs!” Musk said in his post.

Read more
Elon Musk reveals first delivery date and customer for Tesla Semi truck
tesla electric semi truck debut delivery rec

Tesla has finally started production of its all-electric Semi truck, with the first ones set for delivery to Pepsi on December 1.

The company's boss, Elon Musk, revealed the news in a tweet on Thursday evening, adding that the truck is “super fun to drive.”

Read more
Tesla to fix window software on 1M of its U.S. cars
A 2021 Tesla Model S.

Tesla is sending out an over-the-air update to a million of its vehicles in the U.S. to fix faulty window software that could leave occupants with pinched fingers.

According to a document issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla engineers discovered that the affected vehicles may not meet certain automatic window reversal system requirements. It said that in some cases, the window may exert more force before automatically retracting when sensing an obstruction such as a person’s fingers. The condition “may increase the risk of a pinching injury to the occupant,” the NHTSA’s document says.

Read more