[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.

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.

Some may point to this as evidence that Apple wants to get into the car industry. Just a few days ago, Apple was reported to have leased several minivans that were spotted rolling through San Francisco and elsewhere with an array of cameras. While some individuals claimed that these were prototype self-driving cars, it seems more likely that Apple is working on a Street View-style mapping system.

A more logical conclusion might be that Apple simply wants to recruit talented engineers and designers—like those at Tesla—to work on its lineup of computers and mobile devices. After all, no one looks at Tesla’s poaching of a computer engineer and assumes that company is going to dive into the laptop market.

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