Wednesday December 23, 2020
Tim Cook declined to meet
Musk was considering selling Tesla to Apple
A few years ago, Tesla was fighting for its economic survival. Company boss Elon Musk calls Tim Cook for help, but the Apple boss shows no interest. The iPhone manufacturer is missing out on a billion dollar business.
According to CEO Elon Musk, Tesla could have been in the hands of the software giant Apple today. As Musk confirmed on Twitter, he turned to his Apple colleague Tim Cook "in the darkest days of Model 3 production" to discuss a possible sale of the electric car brand. But: "He declined to meet." The purchase price at the time would have been a tenth of the current value of the company, according to Musk. In 2017 and 2018, Tesla struggled with production difficulties with its Model 3 sedan, made losses and had to lay off employees.
According to insiders, Apple is aiming for the introduction of an autonomous passenger vehicle in 2024, which could contain a breakthrough in battery technology. The development of one's own car as part of "Project Titan", which began in 2014, is correspondingly well advanced, said two people familiar with the matter to the Reuters news agency. Another person said a central element are newly developed batteries, so-called mono cells, which could provide more range at significantly lower costs.
Musk wrote on Twitter that Apple's monocell battery was "electrochemically impossible" because "the maximum voltage is about 100 times too low" unless they are connected. Apple declined to comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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