Tesla rivals Rivian, Lucid, and Fisker had been using excessive just a few years in the past. Amid surging investor curiosity, the electric-vehicle makers commanded hefty market caps and spoke of vibrant futures.
Issues look far much less promising at present. The EV sector faces a development slowdown, and even market chief Tesla has warned of difficult months forward. For its less-established rivals, “difficult” does not fairly cowl it.
Final month, Rivian introduced a disappointing quarter and outlook and stated 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 companion of Deepwater Asset Administration, addressed the thought this week of Apple—which lately canned its personal EV undertaking—shopping for Rivian, noting the low valuation. Apple “wants to interrupt into some new market,” he advised CNBC. “They should do one thing large, and probably Rivian could be simply the reply to that.”
After all, that might be an uncommon transfer for Apple. Its costliest acquisition to this point 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 stated of Rivian, “They should minimize prices massively, and the exec workforce must dwell within the manufacturing unit or they’ll die.” He urged the corporate had about six quarters earlier than going bankrupt.
A ‘common EV stoop’
Lucid, in the meantime, has seen its market cap plummet from a peak of $91.4 billion in 2001 to a $7.6 billion at present. Final month, it stated it might construct solely 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 hypothesis 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 occur.
As for Fisker, its market cap stands at $258 million, down from $4.1 billion in 2021. Final month, it acquired a discover from the New York Inventory Alternate for noncompliance as its inventory closed at beneath $1 on common for 30 buying and selling days consecutively. And the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration is investigating claims of “unintended car motion” in Fisker’s Ocean SUV, which lately acquired a much-watched poor overview from influential YouTuber Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD).
Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported this week that the Fisker is in superior talks with Nissan a couple of partnership—and a monetary lifeline. Below 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 consider that we’ve a future—in any other case I wouldn’t be right here,” Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker advised Yahoo Finance this week, declining to handle the Nissan matter head-on. “And I consider we’re gonna handle to get out of this, I might say, common EV stoop that there’s on the market.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
