Yesterday, Apple rejected the $60 billion acquisition of Tesla. Today, Apple wants to use the money to build its own car from scratch.

Although the PR department has been disbanded, Musk and Tesla are still trending on social media. Tesla's "acting PR manager" Musk recently revealed another shocking piece of information:

"During the darkest days of the Model 3 project, I approached Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla for approximately $60 billion. He simply refused to attend the meeting."

As time goes by, Apple has now begun to promote its new energy vehicle business.

For Apple, a company that is good at acquisitions, most of its successful businesses in the past have relied on unique and precise acquisitions. But in the case of Tesla, why did Apple make such a mistake and not even want to meet Musk?

Cook's secret

At the end of 2020, many people who saw Musk's news would sigh for Apple missing out on an investment that would have increased its value tenfold. But on the other hand, how many of those who are sighing for Apple today bought Tesla stock during the "darkest days of the Model 3 project"?

Therefore, when discussing why Apple does not acquire Tesla, we must consider both Apple’s own business and Tesla’s performance over the years.

For Apple, the acquisitions of NeXT, SoundJAM MP, Siri and other businesses in its growth history have largely played a role in turning the tide. However, throughout Apple's history, it has never had the experience of spending huge sums of money to acquire mature businesses. Its largest investment before was the acquisition of headphone manufacturer Beats for $3 billion in 2014.

What Apple is best at is actually creating products with "Apple-style" genes based on the core technologies of acquired companies. For example, even if it spent $3 billion to acquire Beats, Apple will continue to build its own audio ecosystem through products such as AirPods and HomePod.

On the other hand, although Apple has become the "leader" of the US stock market, this high recognition in the secondary market is based on the high profit margin of Apple's business. Once the product declines, market sentiment will take a sharp turn for the worse. In the minds of the secondary market, no good news means all bad news.

Taking the mobile phone business as an example, data from Counterpoint Research shows that the total global smartphone profit in Q3 2019 was approximately US$12 billion, of which Apple accounted for 66%, or approximately US$8 billion, which is more than the profit of all other Android phone manufacturers combined.

Although Tesla has accurately predicted the technology trend, it has not had positive financial data over a long period of time. In particular, in 2018, "the darkest year of the Model 3 project," Tesla's losses reached a record high of $976 million.

In this context, let’s not even discuss whether Apple can reap any long-term benefits from investing $60 billion. Just considering Tesla’s annual losses in the billions of dollars is enough to deter Apple.

It’s not that Apple is short-sighted or conservative, but that Apple has no experience in making such huge investments.

Swinging Apple

Although the refusal to acquire Tesla is only a microcosm of Apple's car-making history, this microcosm actually reflects to a greater extent Apple's vacillation in car-making.

In fact, as early as 2014, before Tesla came to Apple, Apple saw the general trend of new energy vehicles, so it established the "Titan Project" and started its journey of making cars.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Zadesky, a former Ford star engineer and former Apple vice president, had hoped that Apple would build cars in person in the early stages of Project Titan in order to "hit Tesla head-on." However, this direction did not receive full support from Cook, and Zadesky left Apple in 2016.

Subsequently, Project Titan began to focus on autonomous driving. In June 2017, Cook made it clear in an interview: "We are currently focusing on the autonomous driving system, which is a core technology that we think is very important."

However, since Apple does not have AI technology like Google and road driving data like Tesla, Apple's "Titan Project" business is not clear. Data from the 2019 self-driving car road test report released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles showed that Apple's self-driving technology disengaged once every 1.1 miles, ranking last.

For this reason, there were rumors in 2019 that Apple had strategically abandoned the "Titan Project".

Interestingly, perhaps in order to find a "wedding dress" for the "Titan Project", news came out from the supply chain in 2016 that Apple was planning to cooperate with BMW to use BMW's i3 electric car platform to build the "Apple BMW Car".

But as we have seen, BMW's own electric vehicle platform is not working, let alone satisfying Apple, which has strong control.

After six years of twists and turns, Apple seems to have finally come to its senses and realized that only by building its own cars can it fully seize the opportunities of the times. At the end of 2020, Tianfeng Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that Apple is ready to build its own cars, and the first "Apple Car" will be released between 2023 and 2025.

When we look back at Apple’s car-making history, we can find a very interesting hidden thread, that is, Apple has always hoped to get a “standing ticket” in the automotive industry while reducing investment and risks.

This actually exposes Apple's cunningness or weakness. It has long been accustomed to the "light mode" of OEM, where it only controls chips and systems, and leaves the rest to "Foxconn" for manufacturing and assembly. It then only has to be responsible for counting money.

However, cars are different from mobile phones and PCs. A car has 30,000 parts, which requires an extremely large industrial chain and continuous investment. For example, Tesla's Shanghai Super Factory cost 50 billion yuan to build.

Why Apple has been wavering on the issue of making cars is similar to Luo Ning of the National Security Bureau, who habitually wants to make big moves but makes big promises while spending little money.

Apple must build a car

Many people think that Apple's decision to build cars is just a business attempt, just like the "Titan Project". In fact, once we consider it from Apple's own perspective, we will find that Apple is also entangled. The circle is so small, and the speed of information circulation is also amazing. Musk's "venomous tongue" may be to stimulate Apple and Cook today.

From Apple's own perspective, it is precisely because of its successful crossover from the PC and MP3 fields to the smartphone industry that it has reached the pinnacle of the consumer electronics industry, with its market value exceeding US$2 trillion.

But the most serious challenge Apple is facing now is that the pillar role of smartphones is gradually collapsing. Market research data shows that iPhone sales have stopped growing since 2015, and sales even fell by 15% last year.

Although Apple can barely maintain positive growth in financial data by relying on its "sea of ​​devices" strategy and service businesses linked to the iPhone, the revenue share of the iPhone has also dropped below 50%. This means that Apple must find a replacement business before the driving effect of the iPhone on peripheral businesses disappears.

Undoubtedly, this growth point comes from the automotive industry. Statistics show that the total global automobile sales in 2019 were 65.5 million units, of which China and the United States were the top two markets, with sales of 21.045 million and 16.96 million units respectively.

At the same time, the automotive industry is currently on the eve of change. In addition to the Chinese government's vigorous promotion of the large-scale implementation of new energy vehicles at the industrial level, Western European countries have even radically proposed policies to ban the sale of fuel vehicles in the 1930s and 1940s.

According to data released by the IEA, global electric vehicle sales in 2019 were only 2.1 million, accounting for only 3%. Taking the Tesla Model 3, the "hottest new energy vehicle" in the industry, as an example, its sales in 2019 were 367,500 units, and may reach 500,000 units in 2020. This also indicates that the entire electric vehicle market will have an extremely impressive market growth rate in the foreseeable future.

Back to Apple itself, although it saw this market opportunity as early as 2014, unfortunately, Apple has long lost the sharpness of the year when it "slayed the dragon" and missed the opportunity to acquire Tesla.

What is even more frustrating for Apple is that if the "Titan Project" focusing on the software level or the OEM model of cooperating with traditional car companies such as BMW can run smoothly, the situation would be fine. However, the practice in recent years has not produced any results, which directly proves that these two directions are a dead end.

Apple’s old methods no longer work. After going around in circles, Apple, which has always wanted to take shortcuts, finally took a big detour and tried all the ways to build cars before choosing the most normal path of building cars itself.

But will this path work? It’s hard to say. However, these years of wasted time should be enough to remind Cook of the distant afternoon when he rejected Musk’s $60 billion acquisition offer.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.