Tesla rivals Rivian, Lucid, and Fisker have been using excessive a number of years in the past. Amid surging investor curiosity, the electric-vehicle makers commanded hefty market caps and spoke of brilliant futures.
Issues look far much less promising in the present day. The EV sector faces a progress slowdown, and even market chief Tesla has warned of difficult months forward. For its less-established rivals, “challenging” doesn’t fairly cowl it.
Final month, Rivian announced a disappointing quarter and outlook and mentioned it might minimize its salaried workforce by roughly 10%. Its market cap has plunged to $11 billion from a 2021 peak of $153 billion.
Gene Munster, managing accomplice of Deepwater Asset Administration, addressed the thought this week of Apple—which not too long ago canned its personal EV undertaking—shopping for Rivian, noting the low valuation. Apple “needs to break into some new market,” he told CNBC. “They need to do something big, and potentially Rivian would be just the answer to that.”
In fact, that might be an uncommon transfer for Apple. Its most costly acquisition thus far was $3 billion for headphone maker Beats Electronics in 2014. Amazon, which buys supply vans from Rivian, is the EV maker’s largest shareholder, with about 16% of its hard-hit shares.
Final month, Musk said of Rivian, “They need to cut costs massively, and the exec team needs to live in the factory or they will die.” He advised the corporate had about six quarters earlier than going bankrupt.
A ‘general EV slump’
Lucid, in the meantime, has seen its market cap plummet from a peak of $91.4 billion in 2001 to a $7.6 billion in the present day. Final month, it mentioned it might build only about 9,000 EVs this 12 months—far beneath the 90,000 it predicted for 2024 three years in the past. Its struggles led to speculation final 12 months that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which holds about 60% of the EV maker, would purchase the remainder of it. That didn’t happen.
As for Fisker, its market cap stands at $258 million, down from $4.1 billion in 2021. Final month, it received a notice from the New York Inventory Change for noncompliance as its inventory closed at below $1 on common for 30 buying and selling days consecutively. And the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration is investigating claims of “unintended vehicle movement” in Fisker’s Ocean SUV, which not too long ago acquired a much-watched poor review from influential YouTuber Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD).
Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported this week that the Fisker is in superior talks with Nissan a few partnership—and a monetary lifeline. Beneath the deal, the Japanese automaker would make investments $400 million in Fisker’s truck platform and construct its deliberate Alaska pickup beginning in 2026.
“I believe that we have a future—otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker told Yahoo Finance this week, declining to deal with the Nissan matter head-on. “And I believe we’re gonna manage to get out of this, I would say, general EV slump that there is out there.”
