Elon Musk claims he sought to sell Tesla to Apple in 2017

Entrepreneur says Tim Cook refused to meet with him

Elon Musk says he tried to sell Tesla to Apple in 2017 for one-tenth of its current value but CEO Tim Cook “refused” to meet with him.

The South African-born entrepreneur revealed on Twitter that he wanted to unload the electric car company “during the darkest days” of its development of the Model 3.

He made his comments just a day after it was reported that Apple planned on producing its own electric car by 2024.

But Mr Musk claimed that he could not even get a meeting with the tech giant’s boss to discuss a potential deal for Tesla.

“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,” tweeted Mr Musk.

He has previously said that Tesla was “single-digit weeks” away from collapse in 2017 as he sank all the company’s resources into the Model 3.

Mr Musk is now the world’s second richest man with a personal fortune of $155bn after the electric car company’s worth skyrocketed in 2020 to more than $600bn.

Apple has again has set its sights on releasing an Apple-branded passenger car with the help of “breakthrough” battery technology, reported Reuters on Monday.

The Silicon Valley giant first decided to produce a car back in 2014 but its Project Titan has made slow progress since then.

Now Apple could use a new lithium iron phosphate battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost and increase the car’s range, said a person familiar with the design.

But Mr Musk pointed out on Twitter that Tesla was already using that kind of battery technology in some of the cars it is producing in its factory in China.

“Strange, if true,” he tweeted.