From a thousand people to tens of thousands of people, from the verge of delisting to a market value of 1.2 trillion US dollars, Tesla’s road of turning over is getting smoother and smoother. The automotive technology revolution is on the line, and more and more people are chasing Tesla. New car-building forces and established giants are scrambling to get ahead in the field of electric vehicles, thinking about replicating Tesla’s success, and even becoming a “Tesla”. pull”.
Rivian is valued at $54.6 billion
As an electric car start-up company backed by big trees, Rivian is considered one of the strong candidates for Tesla’s successor. Right now, Rivian is about to take a milestone step in its development process-going public.
Next week, Rivian will start trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market in the United States under the symbol “RIVN”. On Monday local time, Rivian submitted a revised prospectus. According to the prospectus, Rivian will sell 135 million shares at a price of US$57 to US$62 per share in the initial public offering (IPO). The financing scale is between US$7.7 billion and US$8.37 billion. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase is the lead underwriter of the company’s listing.
The highest financing of nearly 8.4 billion U.S. dollars will make Rivian’s IPO the third-largest IPO in the US in the past ten years. According to data processing company Dealogic, since 2011, only three companies have raised more than US$8 billion through listings. Alibaba raised a record US$25 billion when it went public in 2014, Facebook, now renamed Meta, raised US$16 billion when it went public in 2012, and Uber raised US$8.1 billion in 2019.
According to Rivian’s goal, in this IPO, the company will achieve a market valuation of up to 54.6 billion U.S. dollars, which is almost the same as the current market value of traditional auto manufacturing giant Honda.
Rivian, formerly known as Mainstream Motors, was founded in 2009 and mainly produces electric trucks and SUV models in the United States. In the second year, Tesla landed on Nasdaq and became the first independent manufacturer of pure electric vehicles to be listed in the United States. . In 2011, Rivian also focused on electric vehicles and officially changed its name to Rivian.
Although it started later than Tesla, Rivian’s background is not small. Since 2018, Rivian has completed at least 8 rounds of financing, with a total financing of more than $10.5 billion. Among them, Amazon and Ford are particularly conspicuous. The prospectus shows that before the IPO, Amazon held 20.2% and Ford held 13%.
Not only that, as early as 2019, Amazon placed an order with Rivian to produce 100,000 electric trucks for delivery purposes.
Tesla rival
Before Rivian, another electric car startup was moving faster. On July 26, Lucid completed its listing on the Nasdaq through the SPAC transaction. The stock price rose 11% on that day to close at $26.83, with a total market value of over $40 billion. Behind the company, there is the back of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
In mid-October, Tesla CEO Musk also satirized Rivian and Lucid, tweeting, “Is it possible to start an electric car company with a valuation of less than $1 billion without delivering any cars? The times are getting more and more weird.” It is understood that when Tesla went public in 2010, it was valued at US$1.7 billion and had already delivered 1,400 new energy vehicles.
But now, Musk may not be able to complain like this anymore, because Rivian and Lucid have recently delivered the first batch of electric vehicles to customers, which seems to mean that they have taken another important step in replicating the Tesla model.
Just a few days ago, Lucid Air’s first model, Lucid Air, was officially delivered in California, USA. The first batch of Dream Edition delivered 520 units. The model started production on September 28 in Casa Grande, Arizona. More than 13,000 orders have been received.
Lucid is targeting the high-end electric vehicle market, and this area coincides with Tesla. According to the news previously announced by Lucid, the Lucid Air starts at $77,400, and the luxury version is priced at $169,000. After deducting the $7,500 federal tax subsidy, the entry-level Air is priced at $69,900. It reaches 2.5 seconds and can travel up to 520 miles (EPA-certified cruising range) on a single charge. It is the longest range of electric vehicles sold in the US market.
As for Rivian, the main force is electric trucks and SUV models, and Tesla has also begun to make efforts in these two areas. A few days ago, the company’s high-end pure electric pickup Rivian R1T has been delivered to customers. From the off-line to the official delivery in September, its progress has been faster than Tesla’s Cybetruck electric pickup and Ford’s F-150 Lightning. As of September, Rivian’s R1T electric pickup and R1S electric SUV had approximately 48,390 reservations in the U.S. and Canadian markets.
It is worth mentioning that with the official start of the delivery, electric car companies have become more popular with investors. When the U.S. stock market closed on Monday, Lucid’s stock price soared 9%, and its stock price soared by nearly 60% in the past week. Rivian, who has been suffering from huge losses, also generated a small amount of revenue in the third quarter because it began to deliver.
Follow or transcend
Tesla needs to be more careful, because the rivals are far more than the two upstarts. “By 2030, the competition between fuel and electric vehicles will end.” Bernstein’s auto analyst wrote.
Judging from the data of the first three quarters, the sales of new energy vehicles in the world’s three major auto markets-China, Europe, and the United States have reached 2.157 million, 1.589 million, and 424,000, respectively. The global sales reached 6 million this year. The car seems to be just around the corner.
Especially in the context of current policy support and fuel vehicles encountering supply chain bottlenecks, electric vehicles are the general trend. Take Norway, which has the highest penetration rate of new energy vehicles in Europe, as an example. The country has basically completed electrification. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles is as high as 91.45%. Residents who purchase electric vehicles are exempt from purchase tax and value-added tax, and they can also enjoy road tax. A series of policies such as preferential policies, free toll fees, free parking fees, and free roadside slow charging.
In this context, any car company wants to share a bite of the cake, and the fuel car giants have ended up, unwilling to watch Tesla dominate. In the next 10 years, BMW plans to deliver 10 million pure electric vehicles. In the same year, Mercedes-Benz intends to achieve 100% purely electric “subject to market conditions.”
Volkswagen has even shown its determination to break its wrist. Its CEO Herbert Diess recently stated, “If the transition from fuel-fueled vehicles to electric vehicles is too slow, the company may consider cutting up to 30,000 jobs in the process of transformation. Improve competitiveness and cut costs.” At the invitation of Diss, Musk “taught” about 200 Volkswagen executives through video calls.
If Rivian and Lucid are potential threats to the future, then these traditional giants have begun to attack Tesla’s throne. In July of this year, in the global electric vehicle market, BYD won the championship with 47,000 sales, while Tesla won the runner-up with 35,000 sales. Volkswagen and BMW ranked 4th and 5th respectively.
Although Tesla’s sales have repeatedly hit record highs, its market share does not seem to rise. In the U.S. market, according to Experian data, in the first half of 2021, Tesla accounted for 66.3% of newly registered electric vehicles in the U.S. The figure was still 79.5% in the same period last year.
Yan Jinghui, a member of the Expert Committee of the China Automobile Dealers Association, pointed out that in terms of brand power, Tesla is still in a leading position in the global new energy pure electric vehicle market, supported by brand power and product lines. But this kind of brand power is not achieved overnight, but after many years of accumulation, on the one hand, it has a reputation for spreading, on the other hand, it is closely related to its market positioning; in addition, it also pays more attention to embodying intelligence and higher technological connotation. Ingenious service and marketing have opened up an innovative situation in the new energy automobile industry.
“Of course, Tesla has also encountered some problems in its development, and there is a certain downward trend. These are more or less problems that the brand will encounter in the development process, but the overall situation is still in an advantageous position.” Yan Jinghui said .
Even more frightening is that many car companies are still accelerating. Taking Lucid as an example, Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said that the next challenge is to increase factory output in order to increase sales. Lucid plans to produce about 575 electric vehicles by the end of 2021, and the output will increase to 20,000 in 2022. Not only that, Rivian also recently revealed plans to build a second assembly plant in the United States in order to expand production capacity.
In Yan Jinghui’s view, in fact, some traditional car companies have also made considerable contributions to the research and development of new energy vehicles, including the investment of multinational giants and local car companies in new energy technology. In the new energy vehicle market, each has its own development path and market positioning. Generally speaking, auto companies promote and improve each other, and the development of the new energy vehicle industry is the general trend.