Tesla chief executive Elon Musk claims that Apple is indeed working on an electric car, saying in an interview: “It’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it.” However, as his company starts to face more competition, he’s not worried and believes that it will ultimately help the industry.

Musk calls Apple’s rumored efforts to develop its own electric vehicle as “an open secret” and the technology company doesn’t seem to be trying to totally hide its efforts. In the past few months, it has already hired experts like Doug Betts and Johann Jungwirth, the former head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon Valley R&D unit, while also reportedly brought on board over a thousand people to work on code-named “Project Titan.”

It’s said that Apple hopes to have its electric vehicle on the road by 2019.

In an interview with the BBC, Musk hopes that Apple’s involvement will encourage more participation to build electric vehicles, something he said is “quite hard to do.”

And while Tesla is already capitalizing on the market, it’s now focusing on making a vehicle that most people can afford — the Model 3 — which Musk said will begin production at the end of next year. “The Model 3, which is the third part of our strategy, which is to produce a high volume, low cost car,” he explained. “We expect to be in production on that at the end of next year. In order to have a substantial effect on transportation, we need to have cars be more affordable…We need to make a car that most people can afford in order to have a substantial impact.”

However, his efforts to take on the mainstream consumer market won’t be easy, as other car companies have announced they’re building electric vehicles for the average driver. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Chevy, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Toyota, and Audi all announced their concepts of an electric car to rival Tesla. And even China-backed Faraday Futures revealed its vision.

“I think all transport, with the exception of rockets, will go full electric,” Musk stated when asked about the role of Tesla. “I see the value of Tesla as an accelerant, a catalyst, in that transition. I think that Tesla maybe, when one looks back on it from a historical perspective, an accelerate in that transition by a decade, maybe more.”

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