Roger Fingas
Tesla Motors is reportedly planning to hire another 4,500 workers in California alone in the next four years, in the face of impending competition from companies like Apple and Google — particularly in the realm of self-driving cars.
Tesla currently has over 14,000 existing workers and 1,600 open jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company is said to be especially interested in engineers for Autopilot, its self-driving technology project.
A little over a month ago CEO Elon Musk even took to Twitter to recruit software engineers for Autopilot, noting that while no car experience was necessary, he would be interviewing candidates personally and that the effort was "a super high priority."
A spokeswoman told the Journal that Musk's move "opened the gate to a new wave of exceptional candidates."
Though often considered a leader in electric car technology, with long ranges and even some early self-driving support, Tesla will soon have to fend off not just Apple and Google but traditional automakers, and newcomers like Faraday Future.
Google is believed to be engaged in a non-exclusive partnership with Ford. Apple's effort, codenamed Project Titan, should see the company ship its own electric car in 2019 or 2020. An initial vehicle may arrive without self-driving features, but the company is thought to be working on such systems regardless.
Apple and Tesla have been engaged in a job poaching battle, trying to lure away top talent from each other's ranks. Musk at one point referred to Apple as the "Tesla Graveyard," a place for people who can't make it at his own company. He later softened his position, but still suggested that Apple would have a tough time entering the car market, since it can't just ask manufacturers like Foxconn to build one.
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26 Comments
It will be interesting to see how these "look". It seems that much time and effort is put towards systems and such. As we see with Tesla not a ton of effort seems to go into the external appearance. It is not bad by any means but also something traditional automakers have struggled with.
Hey remember when Elon Musk mocked Apple's foray into electric autos? Good times.
Won't matter. Since nothing in a Tesla is revolutionary or proprietary there's nothing stopping any manufacturer from building their own to compete against Tesla.
And those companies have significant advantages over Tesla by virtue of their considerable experience in mass producing automobiles.
GM is going to show us its Bolt next month and should be selling them later in the year. They'll beat Tesla to market with a $30kish all electric car with 200 mile range by almost a year. Tesla was stupid to waste time on the Model X and should have devoted those resources to their Model 3 instead.
After GM I'm sure we'll see Honda, Toyota and Ford also release electric cars. Tesla won't be able to compete since they don't actually have any advantage over them.