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Elon Musk: If You Don't Make It at Tesla, You Go Work at Apple

Musk cautions that cars are far more complex than smartphones and smartwatches. "You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car,"

Sounds an awful lot like the Palm CEO in 2006 “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”


Also, when he made the Apple Watch analogy, I thought he was admitting that he was worried at first.
 
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Ouch, seems unnecessarily harsh. He must be stinging from losing all those folks to Apple. If they were as bad as he claims, I'm sure they would have been fired, and not poached. If I were one of those employees who jumped ship, I would be pretty upset that I've just been called incompetent. These are just things you don't do, because there are regular people with personal and career reputations.

Oh, and I still haven't forgiven Musk for PayPal. :)
 
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If the world's largest and most profitable company got into my company's business I would open my mouth as well. Apple could buy Tesla with its pocket change. Tesla's total assets are 6B, Apple's is 273B.
 
VanillaCracker said:
I agree with everything you said, but Musk didn't start Tesla to make money. His entire business model is not a money making one, and he knew that. He started it to revolutionize the car industry (by adding a legitimate electric car to the line), and bring the future a little bit closer to us.
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His business seems to go where government subsidies exist. Let's see what happens when the subsidies dry up. Not turning a profit yet? Let's see that company stand without our tax dollars. All that to build some expensive cars.
 
kodos said:
Ouch, seems unnecessarily harsh. He must be stinging from losing all those folks to Apple. If they were as bad as he claims, I'm sure they would have been fired, and not poached. If I were one of those employees who jumped ship, I would be pretty upset that I've just been called incompetent. These are just things you don't do, because there are regular people with personal and career reputations.

Oh, and I still haven't forgiven Musk for PayPal. :)
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Well, according to Mr. Musk, those people were fired, not poached. (It's in the article...)
 
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Traverse said:
That threw me off as well. I mean, I assume he's referencing the Apple watch as a flop. Although it didn't sell the 850 trillion units that investors wanted or analysts predicted, it's sold several million and is, in my opinion, a great success for a product that is, in its current state, a $350+ iPhone accessory.
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I didn't get that at all, he seems to be commenting on the innovation and design of the apple watch. The functionality it totally derivative of other smartwatches, there isn't anything revolutionary or particularly unique about it. It's also fugly as hell, but admittedly that's my own opinion and lots of people seem to like the design. Just because it's a great success doesn't mean it's going to change the world.
 
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Canubis said:
This somehow really sounds familiar. Only, last time I heard such words it was about a obscure devices called "iPhone" and they were spoken by a guy called Steve Ballmer…
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Elon Musk is no Steve Ballmer. Ballmer was a rube and a crass salesman, handed the reins by Gates. Musk is a genius who created the companies he oversees.
I am not defending Musk's comments or his sentiments about Apple, however he's has a space program and probably the biggest innovation in cars in forever. The automobile is still a crude device with few revolutionary changes over the many decades.
 
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Merode said:
I like both Apple and Tesla and I agree with Musk on this one. I'm surprised so many people are ruffled. I would also bet money that Tesla is going to be much more successful in automotive business than Apple 10 years from now.

Apple Watch hasn't been revolutionary and no watch company is going out of business because of it. I might be wrong but I believe that Apple Watch will die just like the iPod in a few years.

Try reading his words one more time.
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Umm, I don't think the idea of the Apple watch was to put "watch companies out of business"
 
spinedoc77 said:
I didn't get that at all, he seems to be commenting on the innovation and design of the apple watch. The functionality it totally derivative of other smartwatches, there isn't anything revolutionary or particularly unique about it. It's also fugly as hell, but admittedly that's my own opinion and lots of people seem to like the design. Just because it's a great success doesn't mean it's going to change the world.
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Why does every &$)/@!? Apple product have to change the world?
 
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Tonewheel said:
"I know Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a friend of mine. Mr. Cook, you're no Elon Musk."

You're an inheritor, Tim, not a visionary. That guy is gone.
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Heh, funny how when it's in service of trashing Tim Cook or the current Apple leadership team Steve Jobs was a visionary. Otherwise he was nothing more than the tech industry's PT Barnum.
 
I'll try and clarify the Apple Watch comment. Musk is known for having a vision for the future that is straight out of science fiction. The goal of SpaceX is to make humans a multi-planetary species. Literally. Go to their website and see the picture of the red planet Mars turning into a green, terraformed Mars (spacex.com/careers). The goal of Tesla is make the electric car more viable and mass produced.

On April fool's this year, Tesla had a major product announcement — "The Model W" which turned out to be a a fake watch. The joke was that everyone got really excited for a HUGE announcement that Musk was going to release some new revolutionary electric vehicle that would be GREAT... and it turned out to be a watch. What a let down. This was meant to poke fun at Apple, while Musk is focused on getting us to Mars, Apple is releasing functional jewelry.

Musk has been making allusions to technology companies failing us for some time now, these comments aren't really new.
 
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Yeah, one of my first thought was -- two VERY different industries. Just because you hired a former Tesla engineer doesn't necessarily mean they went from designing electric cars for one company to doing the same thing for the other.

A lot of the people at Tesla motors were probably just software developers working on all of the code that the cars use for the touch-screen display, controls and vehicle monitoring systems. That's knowledge one might translate into writing apps for the Apple Watch or designing new icons for the OS X UI, or ??

vvswarup said:
It doesn't have to be a bad thing that Apple hires the people who Musk says "couldn't make it at Tesla." As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure.
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I wonder if Musk has actually looked at his new Model 3.....it's an electric Yugo.
 
He does not even do rocket science. He simply launches old rockets built with 1960 science. Much like any twelve year old does with model rockets.
 
Tesla should be worried about actual car companies producing and distributing cars, not an electronic products company producing cars.
 
lkrupp said:
Just remember Steve Ballmer’s dismissive response to the iPhone in 2007. “It doesn’t have a keyboard so it can’t be used for business.” (laugh, chuckle). Just remember the European watchmaker’s dismissive response to the Watch right before their sales started to slump.

It sure looks like Musk is whistling past the graveyard in this post of his.
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Come on. Ppl need to stop dragging Balmer up. You know what? Balmer was right. At ~$700 with no subsidy and no App Store, he was right. That's why apple allowed it to be subsidized and made an open store. Your welcome for this history lesson, but go ahead and keep drinking the kool aid.

As for apple watch, we have absolutely no idea how it's selling. We just don't know. Apple is going to great lengths to hide it, which in reality should make you think it's not as well as the general public thinks.
 
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