Apple might or might not invest in the Gigafactory to reduce the cost of their lithium battery component of their hardware by 30%, but tesla is thinking bigger.
I first thought that Apple should buy Tesla, but my thought process has changed and I think this discussion between Apple and Tesla is short sighted, it's a means to an end.
Don't think of Tesla as only a car company. 35GW of battery production per year is a huge amount of electricity storage potential.
The USA uses ~1,000GWh of electricity per year, much of this is baseline power needs, but more of this is peak power caused by time of use and heat spikes. We build 1GW power plants all the time to take care of these peaks in power demand. When the price of electricity hits a certain real-time price these natural gas plants turn on, produce the high value electricity and then turn off when the price falls back down.
But why is the electric motor so much better than a combustion motor? Time. Torque is instant.
Elon thinks BIG, REALLY BIG!
This is a Distributed Peak Production Play. If I am correct then each year that the Gigafactory can produce an additional 35GW of storage potential, or 3.5% of the USA's generation capacity.
Each Tesla automobile is an internet connected, transportable, 85kW distributed instant peak power plant and when you put 500,000 new powerplants on the road each year for 10 years you have just cut peak power and completely disrupted the Global Energy Industry by creating 350GW, 35% of the USA's annual demand, and its distributed redundant energy system.
Elon loves redundant distributed systems, Falcon9 has 9 Merlin engines, Tesla's battery packs, Solar City's distributed solar, etc.
Don't believe me? Just wait 10 years.