CUPERTINO, Calif., March 14 (UPI) -- Anyone even remotely interested in following the world's most valuable company has had plenty to read this week.
Shareholders of Apple, Inc. voiced tremendous excitement to company officials during investor meetings this week about the notion of the iPhone maker using its huge pile of cash to buy Tesla Motors.
In fact, CEO Tim Cook was so repeatedly bombarded with questions about the potential acquisition he found himself dancing around the topic like Gene Kelly in a rainstorm.
"I'd love Tesla to pick up CarPlay," Cook said, referring to Apple's new in-car entertainment system. "We now have every major auto brand committing to use CarPlay."
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In one of the few moments he did address the question, Cook said his company doesn't really have a relationship with Elon Musk's auto company.
With nearly $180 billion cash on hand and an appetite for innovation, Apple joining forces with electric car maker Tesla makes sense to a lot of people -- especially combined with the fact that the Cupertino, Calif., tech giant is already eyeing an entrance into the transportation industry.
Last month, it was reported that Apple is setting its sights on the electric car market and possibly even targeting a production date of 2020 -- a world in which it would directly compete with Tesla. And Google. And the big players like General Motors, BMW and Nissan.
What's more, advocates say, such an acquisition would bring revolutionary Tesla chief Elon Musk into the tech heaven co-founded and nurtured by the revolutionary Steve Jobs. After all, Apple is already trying to hire away Tesla employees anyway. And vice versa.
Apple spent $6 billion on research and development last year alone, which includes efforts on the company's "Titan" project -- reportedly the code name of its top secret electric car division. Insiders have said the project is well beyond the concept stage and that aggressive work is being performed in a new Apple facility not far from its main campus in Silicon Valley.
Some tech sleuths have taken to surveying Apple's every move with all the effort, care and suspicion of a CIA operative casing downtown Pyongyang.
Considering their technological and ideological parallels -- as well as Apple's penchant for revolutionizing products rather than originating them -- it's easy to understand investors' excitement at the idea of such a joining of forces. Some experts believe it's not a match made in tech heaven, however, because the two are perhaps more different than they are similar.
"Apart from bringing Tesla CEO Elon Musk into the Apple fold, it's hard to see why Apple buying Tesla makes any sense," Business Insider's Matthew DeBord wrote this week.
"The production of [Tesla's] car... needs to be very fast, very safe, uses all manner of never-before-seen drivetrain and power technologies, and is currently assembled by huge robots and human beings in California," DeBord wrote.
"Teslas are built to last. iPhones are built not to."
Another possible challenge for Apple, DeBord notes, is Tesla may be too far down the road for Apple's visions of grandeur. Elon Musk has already given the world his high-minded, sexy $110,000 Roadster and the $70,000 Model S -- a luxury-sport hybrid that looks a cross between an Aston Martin and a Jaguar. With the first models already on the road, he may now be more ready to handle the more budget-conscious model number three -- aptly, in this instance, named the Model 3.
Another thing to consider, experts say, is that while Apple and Tesla are companies viewed as similar by the public, they have inherently different goals.
Apple, they say, aims to enhance people's digital lives and make investors happy with new gadgets and windfall profits. Musk, on the other hand, is in it to change people's lives -- and largely views money as but a means to achieve his vision for humanity. Musk isn't only chief at Tesla, he also runs SpaceX -- the 13-year-old aerospace company aiming to make human existence an interplanetary venture.
But the skeptics, no matter how much sense their arguments might make, aren't likely to quell the enthusiasm for a joint Apple-Tesla endeavor anytime soon. In fact, Karl Brauer, a senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book, says the fact that Apple would be in such uncharted territory by absorbing Tesla might be a good indication of an impending deal.
"It's such a leap from anything they have done," Brauer told ABC News. "Ultimately, I think the fact that they didn't have anything like an iPad or Apple Watch ten years ago says something. They have a history of breaking out of their wheelhouse."
