So in the last couple days these two things have happened:
1 - Musk announced that Tesla has pulled significant new capabilities out of existing autopilot hardware, showing the world Tesla is still pulling rabbits out of hats. Apple may not be able to innovate on its own - but it can buy someone who can.
2 - Apple has reportedly chopped Project Titan's staff in half after months of rumors that it was unhappy with the progress of the division.
Tesla has a market cap of $30B - and Apple is still sitting on $250B in cash. It could swallow Tesla without even taking time to chew.
GM reportedly paid $1B for Cruise - a startup with 12 employees and no product.
That makes Tesla look like a great buy - for $30B you can buy an actual carmaker with actual sales, a store network, a rapid charging network, the most advanced autonomous driving technology available, hundreds of thousands of cars on the road gathering data for fleet learning, one helluva brand name, hundreds of thousands of orders for a product which does not yet exist and a new charismatic genius leader to give Apple the sexy back that was lost when Steve Jobs passed away.
Any fresh thoughts? This has been beat to death in the past but Apple pivoting on Titan at the same time that Tesla announces rather stunning new progress on existing autopilot hardware has got me thinking again...