Apple CEO refused talks to acquire Tesla at $60 billion: Elon Musk

San Francisco: Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook refused to take a meeting years ago to discuss acquiring Tesla Inc., Elon Musk said on Tuesday. Tesla CEO Musk said in a tweet that he reached out to Apple during the ‘darkest days’ of development of his company’s Model 3 to talk about a possible a deal. Musk said he planned to discuss the possibility of selling Tesla to Apple for one-tenth of its current value, indicating a valuation of about $60 billion. In 2017, Tesla burned cash as it ramped up output of its mass-market Model 3 electric vehicle.

Musk told employees then at the company’s Fremont, California, plant that it faced a period of “production hell” for six months or longer. Weeks after making that statement, he tweeted about sleeping on the roof of the factory as he tried to resolve bottlenecks. That happened around the same time Apple decided to shift from development of a full-fledged Tesla competitor to an underlying self-driving car system. In recent years, Apple has hired a number of ex-Tesla executives who specialise in drive train, car interior and self-driving technology. It has also acquired companies that specialise in self-driving car development, indicating that the company is once again considering entering the market.