Elon Musk

Back in April, the well-known billionaire Elon Musk announced that he would buy Twitter in a $44 billion deal. However, the deal was put on hold a month later after a number of controversies. Now Elon Musk seems to have officially backed out of the Twitter deal, as he has formally notified the company that he will no longer acquire it.

The man of the hour, Elon Musk, is tweeting as much as he can in these past few weeks – and might be related to his deal to buy Twitter. In his latest tweet, Musk is once again attacking Apple’s App Store fees to developers. This time, he compares it to having a “30% tax on the internet.”

Reactions to Elon Musk buying Twitter are in, and it’s fair to say that the overall tone is not one of wholehearted support. Even Twitter itself is taking precautions against potential employee reactions.

But the purchase does have at least one fan: Twitter founder Jack Dorsey …

Twitter may announce its acceptance of Elon Musk’s $43 billion acquisition offer as soon as later on Monday, according to a new report from Reuters. Musk submitted his “best and final” offer to acquire Twitter just under two weeks ago, a move which came just two weeks after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO bought a 10% stake in the company.

In the process of denying he asked Tim Cook to be CEO of Apple during an alleged conversation about a Tesla acquisition, Elon Musk has turned his attention to Apple’s App Store, saying Epic Games is right and that Apple holds a “de facto global tax on the Internet.”

Tesla today reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2021, as detailed by our colleagues over at Electrek. During the accompanying earnings call this afternoon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a pair of jabs at Apple, criticizing the company over its App Store policy as well as its use of cobalt in iPhone and Mac batteries.

Never one to shy away from provocative opinions, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told the Re/code conference that Apple may have left it too late to compete effectively in the autonomous car field. He also said that not all companies exploring the idea appreciate the scale of the undertaking.

I think they should have embarked on this project sooner. I don’t think they’ll be in production sooner until 2020. Is that too late? […]

The sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is hard to imagine until you see the plants. The size of the industrial infrastructure is astonishing.

He did, though, wish Apple luck …

Expand
Expanding
Close

During an interview at Tesla’s design Studio in Los Angeles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented on Apple’s rumored electric vehicle program, codenamed “Project Titan“. It was hardly the first time the CEO commented on the project, but it always interesting to hear about the possibility of Apple bringing an electric car to market. This time Musk called the project under-development an “open secret” and agreed that Apple is “serious about it.”
Expand
Expanding
Close

While we can’t say for sure that an Apple Car will ever go on sale, it’s a certainty by this point that the company is devoting substantial development resources to the project. Tim Cook said recently that there would be “massive change” in the car industry, and that “autonomous driving becomes much more important.”

But as a recent opinion piece on sister site Electrek argued, and Elon Musk warned, actually manufacturing a car is massively more complex than making consumer electronics devices. Apple will therefore be looking for partners to pull together different elements of the car. Re/code has put together an interesting look at the most likely candidates … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

San Francisco-based Mission Motorcycles, a maker of high-end electric motorcycles, recently filed for bankruptcy amid financial troubles. In the filing, current CEO Mark Seeger said the company is so low on cash that it can’t afford to pay for an attorney for the bankruptcy process, but while recently talking with Reuters, former CEO Derek Kaufman dismissed the company’s lack of money and instead blamed Mission’s demise on Apple’s poaching of top engineers…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Yesterday we reported on comments made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk during a recent interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt. The CEO, known for speaking his mind candidly on occasions, made comments that could easily have been interpreted as critical to the design of the Apple Watch and the quality of the company’s hires from Tesla, but Friday afternoon Musk took to Twitter to soften those comments.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s so-called “poaching war” with Tesla has been a hot topic for the company’s CEO Elon Musk and in a recent interview, Musk fired even more shots at Apple. Speaking to German newspaper Handelsblatt, Musk voiced his lack of concern regarding Apple’s tendency to hire Tesla engineers and executives. Musk is recently finished a trip around Europe, speaking with politicians and Tesla employees.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla has taken its recruiting of Apple employees to the next level: the electric car and energy company has hired away Apple’s Senior Director of Corporate Recruiting, Cindy Nicola, to become Tesla’s new Vice President of Global Recruiting. Nicola has already noted her new role and start month of May on her LinkedIn profile.

Notably, Apple actually hired away Tesla’s Lead Recruiter in 2014 for its own electric car project, as we noted in our extensive profile of Apple’s automotive related hires. Interestingly, that former Tesla recruiter Lauren Ciminera has already left Apple to work on a new “confidential” project, according to her own LinkedIn page and confirmation from a source…

Expand
Expanding
Close

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.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XS6HE178I]
Former Apple Mac Engineer Doug Field gives our Seth Weintraub a test drive of the new P85D 

Perhaps annoyed by Tesla’s persistence in picking off its engineers, Apple is attempting to win over some of the electric car maker’s employees with signing bonuses of a quarter-million dollars and salary increases of up to sixty percent, Bloomberg revealed today.

http://instagram.com/p/kINMcVK5BM

Teslas parked at Apple’s Campus

In the past, Tesla has managed to poach a significant number of Apple’s designers and engineers for its own products—more than 150, according to Bloomberg. Some employees have pointed to Musk, who is often compared to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, as one of the key factors in their decision to jump ship. Perhaps that’s why so many seem to be jumping ship to work at Tesla?

But it seems Apple is ready to get back some of those workers. Musk says that Apple “tries very hard” to lure engineers back to Cupertino, but has had very limited luck so far.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Good news and bad news for Tesla Model S owners: the iOS and Android apps have been updated to allow you to start the car without a key – but the matching firmware update needed by the car hasn’t yet arrived.

Version 2 of the iOS app also provides support for the new calendar function, where the car can pull in data from your iPhone calendar and offer to navigate you to the location – as well as providing several new alerts … 
Expand
Expanding
Close