Tesla-CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that he had contacted Tim Cook for a possible acquisition of Tesla. Apple’s CEO did not express any interest.
Musk made this claim on Twitter as a response to the news surrounding Apple developing a car. He says he contacted Tim Cook ‘during the darkest days of the Model 3 program’ to discuss the acquisition of Tesla by Apple. He offered to sell his company for a tenth of its current value.
Today, Tesla is worth around 600 billion dollars, or just under 500 billion euros. This implies Apple could’ve purchased Tesla for around 50 billion euros. However, Cook did not show any interest, as he refused to take the meeting.
In the meantime, Tesla has managed to emerge from these dark days and the Model 3 has become a success. The car quickly became one of the most popular electric cars on the market and Tesla has already many hundreds of thousands of the model. The company’s market value has increased roughly tenfold in the past year.
Musk on Apple’s electric car
Musk’s comment follows the rumours that Apple is speeding up the development of its electric car. The car is said to feature a new battery technology based on lithium iron phosphate. Such a battery would be less likely to overheat and safer than other lithium-ion batteries. Apple would also be working on a monocell design that uses space more efficiently.
Musk has his doubts about these developments. He tweets that Tesla already uses iron phosphate in some of the cars built at the Shanghai Tesla factory. He also thinks a battery based on a monocell design for a car is electrochemically impossible. The voltage would be 100 times too low. He doubts whether Apple might mean bonded cells, similar to the batteries in current Teslas.
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