Tim Cook snapped 'F**k you' at Elon Musk after the Tesla boss said he wanted to be CEO of Apple in return for selling his car firm to the tech giant, a new book claims.
'I'm CEO' Musk reportedly told Cook during the alleged phone call, said to have taken place in 2016, explaining his condition for the sale.
Cook reportedly believed Musk meant that he wanted to stay on as boss of the car start-up, but was stunned when the South African entrepreneur clarified that he wanted to be the boss of Apple.
'F*** you' Cook is said to have responded, according to a Los Angeles Times review of reporter Tim Higgins' upcoming book Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century.
According to Higgins' book, the exchange between Musk and Cook took place during a phone call where Cook allegedly made an offer for Apple to buyout Tesla, amidst an especially rocky time for the electric car manufacturer.
At the time, Musk's job and the company's future was on the line, as Tesla raced to roll out the crucial Model 3 budget before the end of September of that year, in order to record those sales for the quarter and soothe investors' fears over the car start-up's future.
Musk's only request, should the two companies have agreed on such a buyout, was to be installed as the tech giants new CEO.
'I'm CEO,' of Apple, Musk demanded during buy-out negotiations between the two companies in 2018. 'F*** you,' Cook is alleged to have said to Musk's request
The new book also documents what the author claims to be Elon Musk's mercurial temper and recounts several episodes of rage that he flew into during his times as Tesla's CEO, especially the stressful time period of September 2018.
Musk had set the ambitious goal of delivering 100,000 Model 3s by the end of the quarter -- more cars than the company sold in the entire prior year -- and one anecdote recounts how he chewed out a manager who told him it was not realistic.
On a nightly conference call, a manager with years of experience overseeing supply chains for the Army National Guard told him that the company was on pace to deliver 80,000 cars for the quarter, and that his 100,000 goal was impossible.
Within days, Musk fired the manager, according to the book, telling other executives he was disappointed with her 'fundamental inability to perform.'
A new book has documented Elon Musk's mercurial temper and recounts several episodes of rage that he flew into during stressful times as Tesla's CEO
In the end, Tesla's deliveries reached 83,500 for the quarter, nearly exactly what the fired manager had predicted.
Musk has refuted many of the claims in the book, saying in a tweet: 'Higgins managed to make his book both false *and* boring.'
On another daily conference call described in the book, Musk reportedly took Las Vegas sales manager Cayle Hunter to task even as he announced scheduling a record 1,700 people to pick up their Model 3s in the coming days.
A new book dives into the history of Tesla
Musk ordered Hunter to double the number the next day, and threatened to fire him if he called a single customer, insisting that text messages were better.
Hunter panicked because the Las Vegas store did not have the hundreds of company cell phones needed to text thousands of customers, but pieced together a solution using software that allowed his team to text from their computers.
Just nine months into his job, with his wife and children only recently having relocated to join him in Las Vegas, Hunter was desperate at the thought of losing his job, and spurred his team into a frenzy of activity.
Often, they didn't even wait for a customer to respond to a text before putting them down for the assigned pickup time, warning buyers that they'd have to wait until the next quarter if they didn't make their designated appointment.
By the end of the day, Hunter's team had reached 5,000 appointments, and he fought back tears as he gathered them to thank them, not revealing that his job had been on the line.
The Tesla plant in Fremont, California is seen above. A new book makes surprising claims about Elon Musk, but he has panned it as 'false'
In another instance, the book claims that Musk flew into a rage when a manager put in notice that he was quitting the
