An outright merger would ruin both Tesla and Apple. Tesla needs to focus on car design and Apple needs to focus on mobile devices and computers. If Tesla joined

An outright merger would ruin both Tesla and Apple. Tesla needs to focus on car design and Apple needs to focus on mobile devices and computers. If Tesla joined Apple the resulting organization would be too large and would ensure that neither of them could focus. A software/embedded hardware deal, as the interviewer refers to, would make much more sense.