Tesla founder Elon Musk stated that Apple chief executive Tim Cook brushed off talks to buy the car company back in 2017.
Musk tweeted on Tuesday that he reached out to the Apple boss during his company’s “darkest days”.
At the time Tesla was valued at $60bn (£45bn), but it has now grown to be worth 10 times that amount.
Musk explained that he had planned to discuss a possible sale of Tesla to Apple as it was in financial difficulties while building its Model 3 electric car.
During that financial crisis, the billionaire entrepreneur told his employees that its factory was facing a “production hell”.
Weeks later Elon musk posted on twitter about sleeping on the roof of the factory as he tried to fix production bottlenecks.
However, Tesla overcame its problems and has since posted up a series of quarterly profits.
This week, the electric carmaker became one of the most valuable companies to join the S&P 500 index.
Apple has its own ambitions to build an electric car and has hired a number of ex-Tesla executives, along with buying companies that specialise in self-driving technology.
Rumors that Apple was working on a driverless car urged Musk to tweet about his apparent approach to Mr. Cook in 2017.
“He refused to take the meeting”, Musk replied in a Twitter chain on suggestions that Apple is looking to produce a passenger vehicle by 2024 with a new battery technology.
Shares of both Apple and Tesla have surged since the beginning of 2017.
Tesla has gained more in that time, rising roughly 1,400%, but is still worth less than a third of Apple’s market capitalisation.
Source: BBC
