Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that he never spoke to Tesla CEO Elon Musk about buying his failed electric car business couple of years back.

Musk in December last year tweeted that he offered Cook to sell his electric car company at one-tenth of its value during the struggling period in 2017 but the Apple CEO refused to meet him.

In an interview with The New York Times on Monday, Cook said that talks never happened.

"You know, I've never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he's built," Cook was quoted as saying.

Musk had said that during the "darkest days" for Tesla Model 3, he wanted to sell the company off.

"During the darkest days of the Model 3 programme, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting," Musk had said in a tweet.

Musk's tweet came as reports resurfaced that Apple is planning to introduce its first electric, autonomous car in 2024.

Musk had said during a media interview in 2018 that his electric car startup was close to death within "single-digit weeks".

He said that the company nearly went bankrupt in 2008, the year he took over as CEO, and that at the time Tesla had "less than a 10% likelihood to succeed."

Tesla and Model 3, however, survived and the company went on to produce Model Y SUV and new vehicles like the Cybertruck.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk is now the second richest man on the planet after Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Tesla last week said it produced 180,338 vehicles and delivered nearly 185,000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2021.

In the interview, Cook also offered some hints about augmented reality and the autonomous cars.

"I'm already seeing AR take off in some of these areas with use of the phone. And I think the promise is even greater in the future," Cook said.

"We love to integrate hardware, software, and services, and find the intersection points of those because we think that's where the magic occurs," Cook added.