Is Apple a "Tesla Graveyard?"

Shortly after it was reported that "Tesla employees are jumping ship to work on Apple's ultra-secret car project, code-named Project Titan," the trash talking begins.

Taking the old Silicon Valley "our engineers are better than yours" trash talk to a fresh level, Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk had some rather spicy, not-too-nice things to say about Apple's workforce, including their electric-car plans.

In an interview with German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Musk swatted away a question about Apple poaching “important” engineers from Tesla. MacRumors is among those who have reported on the topic when it said that Apple had hired a senior engineer away from Musk’s car company to work on an electric-auto project.

Not skipping a beat, here’s how Musk responded:

"Important engineers? They have hired people we've fired. We always jokingly call Apple the 'Tesla Graveyard.' If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding."

And while Wall Street may be working itself into an excited tizzy over the prospect of an electric car from Apple, Musk seemed to suggest Cupertino is out of its league here. When asked if he’s taking "Apple’s ambitions seriously," the Tesla chief said: "Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?" Then, apparently, he chuckled.

Musk tsk-tsk'd away at those electric car ambitions from Apple, saying it’s a complex thing, not like a smartphone. "You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: 'Build me a car,'" he said.

But he did concede — while getting another dig in — that it’s the "next logical thing [for Apple] to finally offer a significant innovation."

Who is Musk taking seriously? China. The Tesla chief said there are four electric-car start-ups funded from China just in the U.S., and they’re at the "billion-dollar level."

One challenge for Tesla’s ambitions in China is that the company’s cars aren’t produced within that country, meaning it has to pay 25 percent import taxes. But when Chinese auto makers export to the U.S., they pay only 3 percent. If China wants a "level playing field," says Musk, it needs to offer one too.

And profitability for Tesla? Musk said it can’t be "making losses forever," and he hopes the company will be profitable by next year. But don’t expect them to "slow down our growth for the sake of profitability," he says.

As far as Twitter is concerned, the war may just be on now, between Apple and Tesla.