Tesla Inc.’s effort to bring out its Model 3 brought the electric car company near collapse in 2018. Now Chief Executive Elon Musk has divulged a new twist: He says he contacted his Apple Inc. counterpart, Tim Cook, 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 1/10 of our current value),” Mr. Musk said in a tweet Tuesday. But the Apple CEO, he said, “refused to take the meeting.”
Mr. Musk revealed the latest detail as he questioned the seriousness of Apple’s plans to bring out an electric car of its own, amid a new report the company is pushing for 2024 production.
On Twitter, Mr. Musk called the report “strange, if true.”
Tesla has built a brand for itself as a Silicon Valley auto maker offering high-tech cars with promises of fully self-driving technology on the near horizon. The specter of a driverless, electric car made by tech giant Apple could prove the kind of fierce competition that traditional auto makers, such as General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG, have yet to muster.
