Musk claims Apple once snubbed talks to buy Tesla
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Elon Musk has claimed Apple chief executive Tim Cook snubbed talks to buy Tesla back in 2017, when it was going through its “darkest days”.
The tech billionaire said he reached out to the iPhone manufacturer in 2017, but CEO Tim Cook refused to take the meeting.
Yesterday Musk tweeted: “During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.”
The tweet follows the electric car business becoming one of the most valuable companies to join the S&P 500, when it became part of index on Monday.
Shares in Tesla have surged some 70 per cent since mid-November, when its debut in the S&P 500 was announced, and have soared 700 per cent so far in 2020.
But the business faced a disappointing first day on Wall Street, ending its Monday 6.5 per cent down amid news of potential competition from Apple.
Musk’s aforementioned tweet was in response to a Twitter chain that cited a story on Apple looking to produce a passenger vehicle by 2024 with a new battery technology.
Apple’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch.
During 2017 and 2018, Tesla struggled to ramp up high volume production of the Model 3 sedan, with Musk at the time informing investors the company was mired in “production hell” because of problems with automated production systems at its battery factory in Reno, Nevada.
Tesla overcame the problems and has since racked up a string of quarterly profits.