Tesla’s attempt to bring the Model 3 to market nearly broke the electric car company. Elon Musk released a new detail: he said he went to Tim Cook, Apple’s president, to save his company.
“During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for a tenth of our current value),” he said in a tweet Tuesday. The President of Apple, he said, “declined the meeting”. Musk did not specify when to see Cook.
Apple did not respond to the Wall Street Journal’s request for comment.
Musk’s reveal comes after speculation that Apple plans to launch its own electric car by 2024. On Twitter, Musk called the news “strange if it’s true”.
The Model 3, launched in 2017, proved to be more difficult to produce than Musk expected. There were costly delays before Tesla could resolve production and delivery issues in 2018 when it posted profitable quarters in the second half of the year. However, she continued to struggle through the first half of the following year.
In August 2018, Musk shocked investors with the idea of buying the electric car factory in what would have been the largest acquisition in history. At the time, Musk wrote on Twitter, “I’m considering making Tesla private for $ 420. Funds guaranteed.” The deal didn’t go through, and the tweet sparked an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and litigation with the regulator.
In the third quarter of 2019, Tesla had turned the corner and launched a string of quarterly earnings that wowed investors that skyrocketed the company’s shares, making it the world’s most valuable automaker, valued at more than $ 600 billion made (R $ 3 trillion). It was included in the S&P 500 index in the second (21), an important benchmark.
The excitement surrounding the company has allowed Tesla to raise billions of dollars for what Musk called his war fund.
Musk didn’t answer questions about his latest tweet.