“Tesla’s owner, Elon Musk, has said it is an ‘open secret’ that Apple is making a rival electric car,” Rory Cellan-Jones reports for BBC News. “He also predicted vehicles that could not drive themselves would become a ‘strange anachronism’ before too long.”
“The tech entrepreneur’s comments were made during an exclusive interview with the BBC at his design studio near Los Angeles,” Cellan-Jones reports. “Mr Musk said it was “obvious” that the company would try to make a compelling car of its own. ‘It’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it,’ he said. But he did not see the iPhone-maker as a threat. ‘It will expand the industry,’ he said.”
Cellan-Jones reports, “Mr Musk said electrification and autonomy were the two biggest innovations in the industry since the moving production line. ‘In the long term, nobody will buy a car unless it’s autonomous,’ he said. ‘Owning a car that is not self-driving in the long term will be like owning a horse – you would own it and use it for sentimental reasons but not for daily use.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You know who else didn’t see Apple as a threat?
• Microsoft
• Dell
• HP
• Gateway
• Compaq
• IBM
• iRiver
• Diamond Rio
• Virgin Digital
• Garman
• Ericsson
• Motorola
• Sony
• Palm
• Nokia
• BlackBerryEtc.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]