The corporate world is a dog-eat-dog place, especially since automakers use whatever means necessary to get what they want. Apple might not be an automaker yet but it sure has ambitions to be one and has squashed a start-up electric motorcycle company called Mission Motors to do so. Apple is pursuing a 2020 release date for its Apple Car and to do this, it has been snagging up executives and engineers from established auto companies to provide insight into the world of cars.

Larger automakers can endure these losses because they have budgets big enough to entice talented engineers to stay with them. Start-ups like Mission Motors rely on small investments to get up and running, so they can't offer the huge salaries that larger companies can afford. Good engineers are hard to come by so losing workers essential to Mission Motor's effort means that the entire start-up gets axed. Apparently the company had some of the best electric drive engineers and Apple wanted them so bad that it bullied Mission Motors into the grave by taking them. The battlefield is not only on the engineering front but also on the software front as self-driving technology begins to take off.

Even Tesla has managed to snag some of Apple's software geeks, who may have been behind Tesla's recent self-driving update. As Apple, Tesla, and Google begin to make their splash into the car world, it will be interesting to see how longtime car companies like Mercedes and GM will respond.