Apple could have owned the market for self-drive vehicles if given the chance during the Model 3 ramp-up, according to a CNBC interview with a money manager.
We have been watching Apple for a long time. What is an autonomously driving vehicle? She talked about her Ark Invest strategies, the returns she expects long-term, and buying Zoom on its recent drop in an interview with "Squawk Box".
Apple shares hit all-time highs last Friday and again Monday, rising to a market value of over $2.5 trillion, following a report about the tech giant. CNBC requested comment from Apple about its ambitions. Wood was not immediately available to comment.
Wood was referring to a report in June about the departures of three top managers at Apple, and said that it would be hard for them to pull it off quickly. Doug Field, the senior VP of engineering atTesla, waslured back to the company he had previously worked for by Apple. Apple hired a lot of formerTesla employees.
Wood, a long-time shareholder and believer in Musk, told CNBC that this should have been Apple's market. When they were given the chance, Apple should have boughtTesla. We are happy they did not.
In December 2020, Musk revealed that he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook during the dark days of the Model 3 program to discuss the possibility of selling the company for a tenth of its current value. Cook refused to take the meeting.
The first Model 3s, a less expensive EV sedan aimed at mass-market car buyers, were delivered in 2017: after increasing production to meet demand was problematic. In the year of 2018, Musk said that the car business washell and that he was sleeping at the factory to try to solve the problems.
Today, Musk has been selling billions of dollars of his stock holdings as the company has joined the $1 trillion market cap club.
Wood told CNBC that she doesn't see anything wrong with Musk taking profits and paying taxes on stock option grants.
Musk exercised options to buy 2.15 million shares of the company and sold 934,091 of them for over $1 billion. Musk has unloaded 9.2 million shares of stock worth over $9 billion since he asked on Nov. 6 if he should sell stock.
The report was contributed to by the news agency.
