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Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker. Mario Tama/Getty Images
Tesla rivals Rivian, Lucid and Fisker were at the top a few years ago. Amid growing investor interest, electric vehicle makers boasted strong market capitalizations and talked of bright futures.
Things look much less promising today. The electric vehicle sector is facing slowing growth, and even market leader Tesla has warned of tough months ahead. For his less established rivals, “challenging” doesn’t quite cover it.
Last month, Rivian announced a disappointing quarter and outlook and said it would cut its salaried workforce by about 10%. Its market capitalization has plummeted to $11 billion since 2021. top of 153 billion dollars.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, this week addressed the idea of Apple, which recently canceled its own electric vehicle project, buying Rivian, highlighting the low valuation. Apple “needs to enter some new market,” he said. said CNBC. “They need to do something big and potentially Rivian would be the answer to that.”
Of course, that would be an unusual move on Apple’s part. Its most expensive acquisition to date was $3 billion for headphone maker Beats Electronics in 2014. Amazon, which buys delivery vans from Rivian, is the maker of electric vehicles. larger shareholder, with around 16% of its shares most affected.
Last month, Musk said of Rivian: “They need to cut costs massively and the executive team needs to live in the factory or they will die.” He suggested the company had about six quarters left before filing for bankruptcy.
A ‘general drop in electric vehicles’
Meanwhile, Lucid has seen its market capitalization fall from a top from $91.4 billion in 2001 to $7.6 billion today. Last month, he said she would build alone around 9,000 electric vehicles this year, well below the 90,000 it predicted for 2024 three years ago. His struggles led to speculation last year that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which holds about 60% of the electric vehicle maker would acquire the rest. That it didn’t happen.
As for Fisker, its market capitalization amounts to $258 million. under of $4.1 billion in 2021. Last month, it received a notice from the New York Stock Exchange for default, as its shares closed at less than $1 on average for 30 consecutive trading days. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating claims of “involuntary vehicle motion” in Fisker’s Ocean SUV, which recently received a highly viewed bad review from influential YouTuber Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD).
Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported this week that Fisker is in advanced talks with Nissan about a partnership and financial lifeline. Under the deal, the Japanese automaker would invest $400 million in Fisker’s truck platform and build its planned Alaska pickup truck starting in 2026.
“I think we have a future, otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” said Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker. said Yahoo Finance this week declined to address the Nissan issue head-on. “And I think we’re going to get out of this, I would say, general decline in electric vehicles that exists.”