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Blog When Elon Musk Wanted to Sell Tesla, Apple’s Tim Cook Refused the Meeting

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Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said Tuesday that during the “darkest days” of Model 3 production, he reached out to Apple about a possible sale.

Musk said Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook “refused” to take a meeting.

Musk offered the story in response to reports that the iPhone maker is seriously pursuing an all-electric passenger car. He pointed out that Tesla could have been acquired for one-tenth of its current value.






Musk previously said that Tesla was “single-digit weeks” away from failure when the company was trying to get a handle on Model 3 “production hell.” It’s interesting to learn that Musk so feared the company’s collapse that he reached out to a potential acquirer.

Obviously, Tesla corrected its path. Model 3 production is now humming and the company has since added a new vehicle with the Model Y. And, they’re confident enough with production that the company has three more vehicles in line.

Apple has been working on a car project since at least 2014. Dubbed “Project Titan,” the company explored building its own car from scratch. However, the company reportedly abandoned those efforts to focus on automotive software. In 2018, Apple tapped former Tesla employee Doug Field to manage the project and seems to have progressed far enough to excite the company about an actual car again.

Reuters reported this week that Apple hopes to bring a car to market by 2024. In addition to self-driving capabilities, the car is said to pack a “breakthrough battery technology.”

 
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The article about the Apple Car is conjecture still.
Lots of major players have one eye on the EV technology status, and one eye on EV profitability.
Toyota comes to mind as does Honda.

If Apple does have a price breakthrough in battery packs, that will probably be the trigger. However a pragmatic company would get into the battery selling business first, then migrate that vertically.
 
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Great, if the evil apple was a part of Tesla, then it would reduce speed and battery for all cars whenever a new was released, and with every new software release.
Any warranty issue would be a endless fight as they claimed water damage.
And forget innovative features, apple was slow to offer Bluetooth, slow to offer NFC , and slow to allow widgets.
The most innovative feature would be to add a rear camera, in 2023
 
He meant to sell it during their darkest days for Tesla's then market cap of $60 Billion. Result wasn't surprising, really.

Now, considering that a lot of the revolutionary *sugar* they'd been promising for 2019, 2020 remains undelivered (self-driving, semi, roadster), and that it is finally visible the Model S wasn't meant to last more than a single handful of years, it's hard to fathom how they wouldn't have been right to refuse, even if the value has arbitrarily shot upward since.
 
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Reactions: pilotSteve
This. Silicon Valley is the land of the ego. I could see Steve Jobs "not taking a meeting" with Elon Musk.

But Tim Cook? Come on dude, you're no Steve Jobs.. just take the #$*%ing meeting and see what he has to say. And then turn it down.
Totally agree. What's the harm in a conversation with the boss of a revolutionary electric car company? Dumb.
 
There's at least one rumor of an intermediary firm offering to buy Tesla, but only if Elon left, and Elon refusing.

No matter what Elon says, I don't think the end result would have been favorable to anyone had Apple bought Tesla without Elon, so I'm not sure it's quite the situation he describes.

Regardless of mistakes, since Tim took over, Apple has been a machine of finding products that drive disproportionate profit by volume. In other words, not necessarily the best, but good/integrated enough to drive consumers to find value in a higher priced product that ties into other Apple products, services, etc.

An Apple electric car would have to do the same.Relatively higher prices, banking on integration as delivering disproportionate value. I suspect it would have to be the kind of product that, for the most part, consumers buy it and Apple never hears about it again.

High bar....
 
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There's at least one rumor of an intermediary firm offering to buy Tesla, but only if Elon left, and Elon refusing.

No matter what Elon says, I don't think the end result would have been favorable to anyone had Apple bought Tesla without Elon, so I'm not sure it's quite the situation he describes.

Regardless of mistakes, since Tim took over, Apple has been a machine of finding products that drive disproportionate profit by volume. In other words, not necessarily the best, but good/integrated enough to drive consumers to find value in a higher priced product that ties into other Apple products, services, etc.

An Apple electric car would have to do the same.Relatively higher prices, banking on integration as delivering disproportionate value. I suspect it would have to be the kind of product that, for the most part, consumers buy it and Apple never hears about it again.

High bar....
I agree and think Apple would just go straight for a ridehailing network rather than selling the vehicle, there would be quite a few benefits:
  • I can't imagine Apple would want the hassle of dealing with service centres and supercharger networks for customers when they could just build hubs for a network and deal with that work internally
  • The tight integration of the RH network in the Apple ecosystem further entrenches their customers into their ecosystem
  • Vehicles can be designed for the passengers - improving customer experience
  • Apple is one of the few companies that can afford to bear the cost of launching a self funded RH network as it scales
  • If battery rumors around relatively short range are true then it would be a tough sale for customers to buy the vehicle but it doesn't matter for the RH network as people just pay for trips.
 
Great, if the evil apple was a part of Tesla, then it would reduce speed and battery for all cars whenever a new was released, and with every new software release.
Any warranty issue would be a endless fight as they claimed water damage.
And forget innovative features, apple was slow to offer Bluetooth, slow to offer NFC , and slow to allow widgets.
The most innovative feature would be to add a rear camera, in 2023
You do know that Tesla does that too right?
 
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