Apple co-founder says he thinks Elon Musk is a 'cult leader'

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes Elon Musk is a "cult leader" that couldn't compare to his partner, the late Steve Jobs, despite their similarities.

"They're actually very similar, and I don't like to say that because Steve Jobs is such a good friend," the 72-year-old electronics engineer said in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box.

"I put them in the category of having the ability to communicate and wanting to be seen as [an] important person and be like a cult leader. And a lot of people will follow them no matter what they say," Wozniak added.

He also said that he lives a life of "total honesty" but feels Musk doesn't have the same standard.

"You don't make things up. You don't make yourself seem better," Wozniak said. And a lot of honesty disappears when you look at Elon Musk and Tesla," he said.

In another part of the chat, Wozniak said that he and his wife were "robbed" when they had a Tesla back in 2016 as they felt they were misled into believing the car would be fully self-driving.

But, Wozniak was left disappointed that the electric car couldn't drive itself cross-country, despite investing a lot of money to upgrade the vehicle's sensors and cameras.

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In October 2022, Reuters reported that Tesla was facing a US criminal probe following claims that the cars could drive themselves.

The Justice Department started to investigate the company in 2021 after over a dozen crashes stemmed from the vehicle's autopilot feature. Some accidents ended up in fatalities.

Most recently, Tesla revealed that the federal government requested documents from its branded Full Self-Driving and Autopilot advanced driver-assistance systems.

In a US Securities and Exchange filing, the automobile manufacturer said the DOJ asked for the documents related to the self-driving features, but to their "knowledge, no government agency in any ongoing investigation has concluded that any wrongdoing occurred."

Indy100 reached out to Tesla for comment via email.

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