Elon Musk says he tried to sell Tesla to Apple but Tim Cook refused

Elon Musk Source: Recode

What you need to know

Elon Musk says he debated selling Tesla to Apple but Tim Cook refused the meeting.
Musk claims the communication (or lack thereof) occurred during the Model 3 project.

We always ponder the "what if" scenarios, and one of the biggest questions that have found its way into almost everyone in the tech community's brain is, "What if Apple bought Tesla?" Well, it appears that Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, had the same idea at one point.

In a tweet, Musk says that when Tesla was working on the Model 3, he reached out to Apple to talk about a potential acquisition of the company. According to Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to take the meeting.

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 refused to take the meeting.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2020

Musk dropped this revelation when responding to someone talking about the potential battery technology in a future Apple Car.

Strange, if true.

- Tesla already uses iron-phosphate for medium range cars made in our Shanghai factory.

- A monocell is electrochemically impossible, as max voltage is ~100X too low. Maybe they meant cells bonded together, like our structural battery pack?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2020

Now, we don't know much about this potential sale other than what Musk said and the tech community is aware of his tendencies to be...extravagant. It's not clear how serious this potential acquisition was and how far it made its way within Apple.

Apple is also in the middle of working on its own self-driving car project, Project Titan. While the details of what will come out of that project are still highly debated, a recent report suggests that it could result in Apple releasing its own passenger car as soon as 2024.