A new book coming out claims that Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) turned down a chance to team up with Uber.
The book is titled Wild Ride and it will be coming out next week. The author is Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky. According to the book, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick tried to get Tesla Inc to team up with his company.
A section of the book talks about how Kalanick called Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk in order to suggest a team up to better compete against Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). However, Musk shot him down and told him to focus on his own company.
“I said, ‘Look man, we should partner,'” Kalanick says in a passage of Wild Ride obtained by Bloomberg. “Elon spent the rest of the call convincing me that it’s too far out, and it’s not realistic, that I should just stick to what we do best and be focused, or I’m going to f— it all up. That’s when I knew Tesla was competing.”
Neither Tesla Inc or Uber have commented on the revelation made in Wild Ride. The conversation between Musk and Kalanick reportedly took place last year as the latter was hoping to fend off Apple Inc in China following its $1-billion investment in ride-sharing service Didi Chuxing. Uber lost this fight and sold its China business to Didi Chuxing.
Uber has also been having trouble with Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOG,GOOGL) Waymo recently. The company has reportedly agreed to work with Lyft, a rival to Uber, on a self-driving, ride-hailing service. It is also involved in a lawsuit against Uber over allegedly stolen technology.
