Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that he once considered selling the electric car maker to Apple, but the iPhone maker's CEO refused the meeting to discuss acquiring Tesla Inc.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Musk said he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for one-tenth of our current value). However, he refused to take the meeting. Tesla's market value is $ 616 billion, as of the close of trading Tuesday. One-tenth of that is $61.6 billion.
Musk further said he sought out the meeting with Cook during the darkest days of the Model 3 program, a reference to Tesla's first electric car designed for the mass market.
As recently as 2018, Tesla was struggling to meet its vehicle production goals and turn a profit. Tesla's fortunes have changed since then. The automaker is finally making money on a consistent basis after years of losses and continues to hit milestones for deliveries of its vehicles.
According to the reports, 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 a factory as he tried to resolve bottlenecks.
Tesla’s shares have soared 665 per cent this year alone, making it the world's most valuable automaker and among the top 10 biggest US companies in the S&P 500 index, which it entered on Monday.
