Asked if he’s concerned about Apple’s self-driving car ambitions, Tesla CEO replied: ‘Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?’

Outspoken Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has poked fun at Apple, saying his employees refer to the tech company as the “Tesla graveyard”.

Dismissing claims that Apple is poaching key members of staff from his own firm to work on its long-rumoured self-driving car project, Musk said: “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.”

Musk, whose company last week unveiled the Model X, its first SUV, was speaking to German newspaper Handelsblatt. When asked whether or not he took Apple seriously as a competitor in the automotive market, Musk replied, laughing: “Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?”

He added: “No, seriously: it’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: ‘Build me a car.’

“But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.”

Apple’s project to create its own self-driving car is fast becoming one of the worst-kept secrets in Silicon Valley. Although the company has never confirmed that it is working on a vehicle, documents uncovered by the Guardian in August showed that it was seeking space to test its cars in private, looking to secure a 2,100 acre former naval base near San Francisco for that purpose. In September, the company met with California officials to review the state’s autonomous vehicle regulations.