A rather interesting story has been published today which includes an excerpt from “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” a book on the Tesla founder that’s due on May 19th. The report claims that Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk had agreed to a deal with Google which would have seen the Mountain View company acquire the electric carmaker, but circumstances changed rapidly as the deal was about to be closed and Musk ended up not selling to Google.
In early 2013 Tesla was having quite a hard time converting pre-orders for its cars into actual sales. It had to close its factory and was on the verge of bankruptcy. So Musk started negotiating a deal to sell Tesla to Google, reports Bloomberg, citing two people with “direct knowledge of the deal.”
Musk proposed that Google buy Tesla outright for about $6 billion and put up another $5 billion for factory expansions, he also asked for guarantees that Google wouldn’t shut down the company or break it up into parts before the Model 3 could hit the market.
He also insisted to be kept at the helm for eight years, and according to the report, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page “accepted the overall proposal and shook on the deal.”
As the negotiations entered into the final stages Tesla’s sales began to improve so much so that the company actually ended the quarter with $11 million in profit on $562 million in revenue.
Once these results were announced Tesla stocked nearly doubled in value and breached $200 and the company paid off its $465 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy ahead of time and that too with interest. Musk then broke off the negotiations with Google as the lifeline was no longer needed.
Spokespersons for both Google and Tesla declined to comment when reached out to by the scribe.