Apple CEO Tim Cook says he's never met Elon Musk but has 'great admiration and respect' for Tesla

• Apple CEO Tim Cook said Monday that he'd never met Elon Musk.
• He said that Musk's electric-vehicle company Tesla had done "an unbelievable job."
• Apple reportedly plans to enter the EV market with its own autonomous vehicle.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Apple CEO Tim Cook praised electric-vehicle company Tesla on Monday, but said that he hasn't yet met its CEO Elon Musk.

Cook's comments came less than two weeks after Musk posted, then deleted, a tweet implying Tesla could be bigger than Apple "within a few months."

Cook told The New York Times' Kara Swisher: "You know, I've never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he's built.

"I think Tesla has done an unbelievable job of not only establishing the lead, but keeping the lead for such a long period of time in the EV space," he added.

Tesla and Apple don't directly compete - but this could soon change. Apple reportedly plans to build an autonomous electric car by 2024, and during Monday's interview Cook hinted that the project was real. Apple has recently patented some vehicle features.

Musk said in December that he once wanted Apple to buy Tesla for a tenth of the company's 2020 value, but that Cook wouldn't meet with him.

Read more: Apple will never deliver a car because it can't figure out how to work with the automakers who could make it happen

Tesla posted record sales in the first quarter of 2021 despite a worldwide shortage of semiconductor chips. Wall Street now expects Tesla to sell more than 800,000 vehicles this year.

Musk has famously clashed with other US business leaders including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.