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Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk stated on Tuesday he reached out to Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook “during the darkest days of the Model 3 program” to talk about the chance of the iPhone maker buying Tesla Inc for a tenth of its present worth.
“He refused to take the meeting,” stated Musk, CEO of electric-car maker Tesla, replying to a Twitter chain which cited a Reuters story on Apple trying to produce a passenger car by 2024 with a brand new battery expertise.
During 2017 and 2018, Tesla struggled to ramp up excessive quantity manufacturing of the Model 3 sedan, with Musk on the time informing buyers the corporate was mired in “production hell” as a result of of issues with automated manufacturing techniques at its battery manufacturing facility in Reno, Nevada.
However, Tesla overcame the issues and has since racked up a string of quarterly earnings. The electrical automaker turned one of probably the most beneficial firms to be part of the S&P 500 when it turned half of the broadly adopted inventory index on Monday.
Shares of Tesla, nonetheless, ended 6.5 p.c decrease in its S&P 500 debut, amid information of potential competitors from Apple.
Apple’s automotive efforts, often called Project Titan, have proceeded inconsistently since 2014 when it first began to design its personal car from scratch.
Central to the corporate’s technique for auto manufacturing is a brand new battery design that would “radically” scale back the associated fee of batteries and improve the car’s vary.
In the identical Twitter chain, Musk stated “monocell”, which Apple plans to use in its design, “is electrochemically impossible as max voltage is ~100X too low” until they’re bonded collectively.
Strange, if true.
– Tesla already makes use of iron-phosphate for medium vary vehicles made in our Shanghai manufacturing facility.
– A monocell is electrochemically not possible, as max voltage is ~100X too low. Maybe they meant cells bonded collectively, like our structural battery pack?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2020
Apple declined to remark whereas Tesla didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark.
© Thomson Reuters 2020
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(This story has not been edited by Newslivenation employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)