Apple CEO Tim Cook says he admires what Elon Musk has built

Late last year, around December, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had revealed that he had reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook during Tesla’s darkest days. At that point in time Musk wanted to sell Tesla to Apple, but Cook had not met him.

Now, in a recent interview, Cook has shared a little about what he thinks about Tesla and Musk. He, however, did not confirm or deny what Musk had said last year about Cook refusing to hold a meeting.

Speaking to Kara Swisher for Sway, Cook said that he’s never actually spoken to Musk.

“You know, I’ve never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he’s built. I think Tesla has done an unbelievable job of not only establishing the lead, but keeping the lead for such a long period of time in the EV space. So I have great appreciation for them,” Cook said.

Cook was responding to Swisher asking him about self-driving cars and when Musk’s topic was brought up. Swisher mentioned that Musk had said “he offered to sell Tesla to Apple for 1/10 its value. And he said you wouldn’t even take a meeting with him”.

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While Cook refused to share much details about what Apple was planning to do with cars, there have been plenty of rumours doing the rounds about a potential Apple Car in the future.

“In terms of the work that we’re doing there, obviously, I’m going to be a little coy on that,” Cook said.

He added though that “the autonomy itself is a core technology”.

“If you sort of step back, the car, in a lot of ways, is a robot. An autonomous car is a robot. And so there’s lots of things you can do with autonomy. And we’ll see what Apple does. We investigate so many things internally. Many of them never see the light of day. I’m not saying that one will not,” Cook said.

“Would it be in the form of a car or the technology within a car?” Swisher asked and Cook refused to answer that question.

You can read the whole transcript of Cook’s interview here.