This article is an excerpt from an upcoming Elon Musk bio.
Earlier in 2013 the company was struggling to turn preorders of its vehicles into actual sales. As Musk put his staff on crisis footing to save Tesla, he also began negotiating a deal to sell the company to Google through his friend Larry Page, the search giant’s co-founder and chief executive officer, according to two people with direct knowledge of the deal.
Fascinating read. Especially if you keep in mind all the Apple Car talk of the last 6 months or so and the fact that Musk is said to have met with Apple around the same time.
Let’s not kid ourselves, this wasn’t a “deal to sell Tesla to Google” so much as it was Musk having his buddy Page become a Sugar Daddy with Google shareholder money. “He also wanted guarantees that Google wouldn’t break up or shut down his [whose?] company before it produced a third-generation electric car aimed at the mainstream auto market. He insisted that Page let him run a Google-owned Tesla for eight years, or until it began pumping out such a car.” Really? That’s all? No wonder it fell apart when the lawyers got involved. Apparently some people in Mountain View still understand what the phrase “fiduciary responsibility” means.