Is Apple Trying to Buy Tesla?

Apple might just be shopping for a certain electric car company, suggests the San Francisco Chronicle. It reports that Tesla's Elon Musk held a secret meeting last year with the Apple executive in charge of mergers and acquisitions and "probably" CEO Tim Cook. Industry analysts have been floating the idea of such a bold merger for a while, but the Chronicle piece is the first to suggest that it's gone beyond speculation. "Such a high-level meeting between the two Silicon Valley giants involving their top dealmakers suggests Apple was very much interested in buying the electric car pioneer," write Thomas Lee and David R. Baker.

A blogger at 9to5mac, however, doubts that Apple wants to buy or that Musk would sell even if it did. Instead, Seth Weintraub writes that Apple is probably more interested in getting in on Tesla's upcoming "giga factory," a green venture that aims to double the world's production of lithium-ion batteries. Tesla is set to announce it soon. The Chronicle story, incidentally, also says Apple is interested in acquiring sensor technology that can predict heart attacks. (More Apple stories.)