Ankit Banerjee, Toronto, November 10, 2021
Executives at GM and Ford need to watch their rear-view mirrors with Rivian, an electric pickup truck company backed by Amazon, quickly catching up. In its first public offering, Rivian’s stock price sped past the $100 mark and put its market value at a little under $85 billion, just behind General Motors and Ford, and instantly making it the sixth largest automaker in the world. This, despite Rivian having only 150 of its electric pickup trucks on the road, owned mostly by employees. And with over $2 billion in losses over the past couple of years. It’s all about betting on the future, though, but Rivian doesn’t have the easiest road ahead.
Rivian has a couple of different fights on its hands. It will need to prove its worth against Tesla, which continues to be the dominant force in the electric car space. But with Rivian’s focus on pickup trucks, it’s also taking on legacy players like GM and Ford. The Rivian R1T, its first pickup truck, ticks all the right boxes. With a promised range of close to 650 kms, a towing capability of 5000 kgs, and multiple storage options between the rear bed, front trunk, and under seat compartments, the R1T is close to or surpasses a lot of its competition. However, the established pickup truck customer base will be quite hard to convince to make the switch to electric.
That is evident in the modest pre-order numbers for the R1T at just under 55,000. Even then, if you’re planning to get a Rivian, get ready to spend close to $75,000 and wait for a long, long time. Rivian won’t be able to ramp up production enough to meet its pre-order demand before the end of 2023. Rivian’s factory in Illinois will only be able to produce 1,200 cars by the end of the year. It plans to increase production capacity to 100,000 by 2022 and more than a million by 2030 with a new factory in Texas, while also releasing an all-electric SUVs and delivery vans (for Amazon) in the next five years.
The fresh influx of cash, close to $12 billion dollars from the public offering, will only help.
US-Rivian-IPO, Update@
Update:UPDATES: Updates stock price, market value after close of
trading. With AP Photos.@
INDEX: Business, International, Environment@
Electric truck maker Rivian zooms to $86B market value@
By Matt Ott @
SILVER SPRING, Md. – Shares of Rivian Automotive jumped in their
debut Wednesday, rising as much as 53% as investors look for the
next big winner in the electric vehicle market. The closing price of
$100,73 gave Rivian a market value of about $85.9 billion, greater
than that of Ford and just below General Motors. That’s noteworthy
because Rivian has so far delivered about 150 of its electric pickup
trucks to customers, mostly employees, whereas Ford and GM sell
millions of cars globally each year. Rivian is the latest in what’s
becoming a long line of companies trying to peel away some of
Tesla’s dominant market share in electric vehicles.
(The Associated Press)
16:31ET 10-11-21
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