Electric carmaker Tesla is soaring, with a market cap of $ 606.9 billion and a stock price up 813% this year. But Elon Musk really wanted to sell the company to Apple at a time when Tesla was struggling. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO since 2011, wouldn’t even sit down to meet with Musk to discuss the possibility – at least that’s the story, according to Musk.
“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 declined to accept the meeting, ”Musk tweeted Tuesday.
Those “darkest days” are likely sometime in 2018, when Musk’s company struggled to meet its Model 3 production targets. It was a rough time for Musk and Tesla, with terrible reports about it Autopilot failed, investigating unsafe Terms of employment, and a bit old-fashioned union busting for good measure.
And Musk’s problems that year weren’t limited to the Model 3. He risked his security clearance with SpaceX and the Air Force after being spotted to smoke weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, random a poor man one pedophile, was hit by class action lawsuits over his weird tweets, announced one high-speed tunnel in Chicago that wasn’t going anywhere, and was even sued by the SEC.
Desperate for the cash to float Tesla over the past decade, Musk turned to a number of different sources when he needed money. And Apple was far from the first major tech company to have no real interest in buying Tesla.
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Like the Guardian notes, Google co-founder Larry Page almost bought Tesla during a ‘handshake deal’ in April 2013, according to Musk’s 2015 biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance. The asking price was $ 6 billion, according to the book, but Musk wanted to remain head of the company for at least eight years and get $ 5 billion to expand Tesla factories, something Google’s lawyers apparently didn’t appeal to.
Musk didn’t actually make Tesla, despite popular perception that he did. The company was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and Musk first invested in the company in 2004, although the billionaire still calls himself a co-founder. Eberhard and Tarpenning were pushed out of the company by Musk in the late 2000s, and Eberhard sued the SpaceX co-founder (Musk actually created it) for defamation and breach of contract. The lawsuit has been settled for an undisclosed amount.
Tesla is currently doing very well financially and will be the latest company to join the S&P 500. But we think Apple will survive without Tesla. Yes, Apple is still working on a self-driving car set for 2024 According to a new report this week, but even without a car, Apple is raking in historic gains.
Apple posted sales of $ 64.7 billion in the last quarter alone, even during an economic downturn and a horrific pandemic. Apple will likely be fine in the near future, but that doesn’t mean Tim Cook isn’t kicking himself.