Tesla Rivals Lucid, Rivian, Fisker Struggling to Compete

[balthazar]

The stock market has stopped being kind to electric vehicle companies that show much more promise than results.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/the-stock-market-has-no-mercy-for-tesla-ambitious-rivals?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO

The love at first sight between investors and young manufacturers of electric vehicles seems to have died. 

As often in every relationship, the beginnings are marked by great promises.  Everything seems beautiful, everything seems light.  Few important questions are asked because there is hope that we have drawn the right number so that we close our eyes to things that would normally have alerted us to slow down. 
We look forward to better tomorrows until something happens that derails the whole beautiful mechanism.  We then open our eyes and we begin to ask questions we should have asked from the beginning.  This is somewhat the situation in which investors and Tesla's rivals currently find themselves.  The time to ask the uncomfortable questions seems to have arrived.
 

With the exception of Lucid Group and Fisker, the shares of most of these firms -- Rivian, Nikola, Lordstown Motors, and Hyliion Holdings -- have crashed after surging.  The prices of these stocks are now below their IPO price.  And it is not certain that they will recover in the short term.

Most of these firms entered the market through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Typically, SPACs command an initial offering price of $10 — comprised of an equity unit and a warrant — with shares having the potential to move dramatically higher once sponsors reveal the merger target.  Rivian's stock is currently trading at $47.37, down 39.2% from its November 10 IPO price of $78. In full euphoria, the action of the manufacturer of SUVs and electric pickups had risen to $172.01 on November 16, a week after its first stock market debut.
 

As for electric and hydrogen truck maker Nikola, its stock has lost at least 33.6% of its market value compared to its IPO price of $10.  Things are even worse for Lordstown Motors and Hyliion.  The Lordstown stock simply fell apart.  From $10 when it debuted in October 2020, it is currently trading at $2.18, a drop of 78.2%.  The stock market valuation has declined from $1.6 billion to $428.3 million last Friday at the close of trading.  Basically, nearly $1.1 billion in market capitalization is gone in 17 months.  Lordstown Motors still hasn't produced a single electric vehicle but the company continues to burn cash and needs it to solve its production problems.

Shares of hybrid and electric heavy-duty commercial truck firm Hyliion are currently trading at $3.77, down 62.3% from their IPO price.

[ More article at link ]

 

[balthazar]

In a quizzical announcement today, Rivian claimed it is "on track" to meet it's halved/reduced production total of 25K units in 2022 (it was originally slated to be 50K units).

What's quizzical about it is; Rivian also stated they produced 2,553 units (and delivered 1,227) in Q1.

That's an annual rate of 10K units, not 25K units. 

Should we expect another annual volume halving soon?

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Rivian also confirmed work continues in Georgia to give them a annual production capacity of 600,000 units, tho no one can imagine why/now there's any reason to.

Edited April 6, 2022 by balthazar