Billionaire Elon Musk, chief executive of electric car maker Tesla, said on Tuesday that he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook "during the darkest days of the Model 3 car manufacturing program" to discuss the possibility of an iPhone maker taking over the company for a tenth of its current value.
The American billionaire said Cook had "refused to attend the meeting."
Musk’s speech came in a series of tweets on Twitter after news was reported to Reuters that Apple aims to produce a passenger car by 2024 using new battery technology.
Tesla struggled during 2017 and 2018 to ramp up mass production of the Model 3 sedan, as Musk told investors at the time that the company was mired in "production hell" due to issues with automated production systems at the battery plant in Reno, Nevada.
However, Tesla overcame problems and has since posted a streak of quarterly profits.
The electric car maker has become one of the most valuable companies recently joined to the S&P 500.
Apple’s efforts in the automotive field have begun in 2014 with its project, known as Project Titan, in ups and downs.
Central to the company's automotive strategy is a new battery design that can "drastically" reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle's range.
In the same series of tweets, Musk questioned the capacity of the monocell batteries, which Apple plans to use in its design, saying that the expected capacity of the battery is "electrochemically impossible."