San Francisco: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has criticised Apple, saying the iPhone maker uses more cobalt in its batteries than Tesla. After reporting a record $1.14 billion in net income in the second quarter (Q2) 2021, Musk said that the electric car-maker does not uses cobalt in its vehicles. Tesla Restarts Deliveries of Model S: Report.

"Tesla uses no Cobalt and almost none in the nickel-based chemistries. On a weighted average basis, we might use 2% Cobalt compared to say Apple's 100% Cobalt," he said during the earnings call on Monday. "There is somehow a misconception that Tesla use a lot of Cobalt, but we actually don't. Apple uses I think almost 100% Cobalt in their batteries in cellphones and laptops," he added.

"For the supercharger to be useful to other car companies, we need to grow the network faster than we're growing vehicle output, which is not easy. We're growing vehicle output at a hell of a rate. So Superchargers need to grow faster than vehicle output," he said. "It's going to be a great product, our best product ever. But there's a lot of fundamentally new design ideas in the Cybertruck. Nobody's ever really made a car like this before. A vehicle like this before," Musk told the analysts. On Cybertruck, he said that ramping up its production "will be difficult because it's such new architecture".

"Some cobalt mined in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been linked to human rights abuses such as child labour," reports CNBC.

Apple is reportedly developing an electric self-driving car under a project code-named Titan. In 2019, Apple, in addition to Tesla and other major technology companies, was named as defendants in a human rights lawsuit, according to The Guardian. Musk said that he needs the supercharger network to grow globally.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 27, 2021 12:47 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).