Apple making a car, Elon Musk tells BBC

Tesla CEO Elon Musk yestrday told the BBC in an interview that while building a car is quite hard, "Companies like Apple will probably make a compelling electric car."

"It seems like the obvious thing to do," he added.

When asked to whether he had heard anything about Apple building a car, Musk said, "It's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it."

Some of the engineers Apple hired had come from Tesla. Musk had suggested last October that Apple was hiring the engineers that Tesla fired.

But Musk also said that Apple's design abilities were not perfect.

He said, "Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? No, seriously. It's good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches."

When asked whether he considered Apple as competition in the car industry, Musk told the BBC that it would only "expand the industry."

Apple CEO Tim Cook has also sidestepped questions about Apple's auto ambitions, though in recent months, the company was said to have registered domain names such as Apple.car (See: Speculation rife about iCar as Apple registers names ). 

Apple was also reportedly investigating a self-driving car testing facility in Concord, California.

Meanwhile, Tesla this week released new software updates to improve the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles, including new limits on highway speeds and a way for owners to "summon" their empty vehicles.

However Musk said he already believed the technology had proven itself even though Tesla introduced the self-driving software into its fleet of vehicles only late last year and even that did not make the vehicles fully autonomous vehicles.

"It's probably better than a person right now [at driving]," Musk said during a conference call with reporters.

Musk also said he expects rapid improvements over the next 24 to 36 months, when a Tesla "will be able to drive virtually all roads at a safety level significantly better than humans."