Shawdesh desk;

Tesla founder Elon Musk says that Apple chief executive Tim Cook snubbed talks to buy the car company back in 2017.

Musk tweeted on Tuesday that he reached out to the Apple boss during his company’s “darkest days”.

At the time Tesla was valued at $60bn (£45bn), but it has now grown to be worth 10 times that amount, BBC reported.

Musk said he had planned to discuss a possible sale of Tesla to Apple as it was struggling financially while building its Model 3 electric car.

During that cash crisis, the billionaire entrepreneur told his employees that its factory faced a period of “production hell”.