When asked if he takes Apple's plans seriously, he took a jab at one of Cupertino's newest devices, as well as the fruit company's typical manufacturing process, which involves Taiwanese contractor Foxconn: 
 
 Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? (laughs) 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. 
 
 Musk didn't go to Germany just to diss Apple, though: he went there to talk with government representatives about the future of mobility and electric vehicles in the country. He admitted that financial and other incentives for EVs -- such as allowing them to use the bus lanes like Oslo, Norway does -- would be extremely helpful in Tesla's expansion plans. 
 
 He also didn't hold back when asked what the German automakers are doing wrong, explaining that they're trying to cling to the past. Musk boldly proclaimed that we've reached the limit of what gasoline can do, and it's time to build the next generation of automobiles. "You see what's happened with the current diesel scandal at Volkswagen," he said, using the automaker's emission-cheating car scandal as an example. "In order to make progress, they apparently had to cheat. I think if you intentionally mislead governments around the world with software that is designed to only be effective at the test stand, this is a very conscious action." 
 
 Yo, I don't hate Apple. It's a great company with a lot of talented people. I love their products and I'm glad they're doing an EV. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 9, 2015 Regarding the watch, Jony & his team created a beautiful design, but the functionality isn't compelling yet. By version 3, it will be. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 9, 2015 
 
 [Image credit: pestoverde/Flickr] 

 During a visit to the German capital on Thursday, the Tesla e-car chief shared his thoughts on the VW scandal, stuffy CEOs, roadblocks to e-mobility – and the need to consign gasoline to history. 
 
 The biggest surprise was that Elon Musk showed up in a tie. That was something we hadn’t expected from a California-based entrepreneur of his caliber. Before the Handelsblatt interview, the Tesla CEO visionary of electromobility had just met with 30 government representatives at a parliamentary breakfast in Berlin to talk about the future of mobility and would meet with German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel. He gave Handelsblatt his frank take on the old-school thinking within the German auto industry, what VW should do next and how the German autobahn forced Tesla to adapt their cars. 
 
 Handelsblatt: Mr. Musk, how many Teslas have you seen on the road during your visit to Germany this time? 
 
 Elon Musk: I admit, it wasn’t that many. But in Germany, we are also still a comparatively small player on the market.
– Just over a week ago, Elon Musk introduced the "Bioweapon Defense Mode" in Tesla's Model X, and now he's going nuclear on a new target: Apple. Per the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the Tesla CEO was in Berlin Thursday and had some choice things to say when asked to respond to rumors Apple was stealing away some of his workers to work on an alleged self-driving-car project. "Important engineers? They have hired people we've fired," he said, Ars Technica UK reports. "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, who Engadget says was in the German capital to talk about the future of electric cars, didn't stop there with what Ars Technica calls his "sick burns." "Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?" he said. "Cars are very complex compared to phones or smart watches. You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: 'Build me a car.'" But to Musk, it seemed to make sense Apple is supposedly getting into the automotive business. "For Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation," he noted. "A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough." (Musk also wants to go nuclear on Mars.)