SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk (R) gestures as he arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Awards ceremony in Berlin on December 1, 2020.
Britta Pedersen | AFP | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday tweeted that he had considered selling his electric car business to Apple in recent years, but Apple CEO Tim Cook wasn’t even interested in a meeting.
Specifically, Musk wrote in a tweet on Dec. 22:
“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).
On Tuesday, Musk also made comments about lithium iron phosphate batteries that Apple is reportedly developing for use in vehicles, according to a report by Reuters on Monday.
“Strange, if that’s true,” Musk wrote. “Tesla already uses iron phosphate for medium-haul cars that are made at our factory in Shanghai. – A monocell is electrochemically impossible, as the maximum voltage is ~ 100x too low. battery pack? “
It was a rare admission from Mercurial’s CEO that he once considered relinquishing control of the company he helped build and building a market value greater than the top nine automakers put together. Tesla has not discussed a sale in any of the financial statements.
In 2018, Musk said publicly the auto business was “hell”, and that he slept at the factory to try to solve the problems the company had when trying to mass-produce its Model 3 electric sedans.
He also said earlier, in a tweet, that Tesla once got it “in a month” after bankruptcy during the start-up of Model 3 – a detail the company never disclosed in its quarterly filings.
Tesla and Apple have always competed for talent in Silicon Valley and beyond. In 2015, Musk Apple named the Tesla graveyard. “If you don’t make it to Tesla, you will work for Apple,” he joked at the time.
In July 2018, Apple re-hired Tesla engineering chief Doug Field – a former Apple employee – after dozens of other employees.
At the time, Tesla told CNBC in a statement about Apple’s ability to pull key employees out of its ranks: “Tesla is the tough path. We have 100 times less money than Apple, so of course they can afford to pay more. extremely tough fights against deep-rooted car companies that make 100 times more cars than last year, so this is obviously very hard work. ”
Apple has never acknowledged plans to build a car, but Cook has admitted it has been working on “autonomous systems” that could be used in self-driving cars or for other purposes.
Apple and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.