The CEO of one of the largest companies in the world was spotted riding in an electric pickup truck in Idaho Thursday. While this wouldn’t typically be a big news story, it comes as the company has been linked with a potential acquisition or partnership of an electric vehicle company previously.
What Happened: Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook was spotted taking a ride in an R1T electric pickup truck from Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ:RIVN) Thursday, as reported by Bloomberg.
Cook was said to have borrowed the metallic green pickup truck while in Idaho for the Sun Valley Conference. Cook took the truck from the Sun Valley Resort to a restaurant for dinner.
Rivian CEO and co-founder R.J. Scaringe is in attendance for the Sun Valley Conference. Scaringe brought the R1T and R1S, the EV maker's sports utility vehicle, with him according to the report. Sources say Scaringe’s vehicles attracted crowds of attendees including CEOs and founders of publicly-traded companies.
Related Link: 5 Things You Might Not Know About Apple CEO Tim Cook
Why It’s Important: Apple has been working on its own electric vehicle initiative for years. Many analysts have pointed to Apple eventually acquiring an existing electric vehicle company or partnering with one to help provide a boost to the division instead of starting from scratch.
The borrowing of the vehicle could signal that Scaringe and Cook at least talked at the event. While this could just be a goodwill gesture, it could also lead to increased speculation between Apple and Rivian.
Rivian shares have fallen over 68% since their November IPO and the company now has a market capitalization of $28 billion.
Also expected to be in attendance at the Sun Valley Conference is Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. Rivian is considered big rival to Tesla.
Musk and Cook made headlines together when a book claimed that Cook offered to buy Tesla. Musk reportedly said he would agree to the deal if he could be the CEO of Apple after the acquisition.
Musk refuted the claim saying he has never spoken to Cook. Musk did say that he requested to meet with Cook over a potential acquisition of Tesla by the larger technology giant, but Cook refused to meet him.
Cook said in an interview that he had never spoken to Musk and went as far as to praise what Musk has done with Tesla.
“You know, I’ve never spoken to Elon, although I have great admiration and respect for the company he’s built,” Cook said. “I think Tesla has done an unbelievable job of not only establishing the lead, but keeping the lead for such a long period of time in the EV space.”
Photo: Apple; car via Rivian
