Electric car maker
Tesla rival Rivian misses production target
A Rivian R1T at the company’s headquarters in Plymouth, Michigan. Photo: Paul Sancya / AP / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Stock market shooting star Rivian messes up with his first numbers. Rivian went public in November and made a brilliant debut.
The US electric car maker and stock market shooting star Rivian failed when it presented its first figures on the stock market.
The company will miss the production target of 1200 electric pick-ups this year by a few hundred cars, the company announced after the US stock market closed in Irvine, California. Starting production is more difficult than expected, said company boss Robert Scaringe in an analyst conference. This caused disappointment among investors, the share fell after the hours of trading by over eleven percent. In addition, the rival of the electrical pioneer Tesla presented a net loss of 1.2 billion US dollars (1.1 billion euros). The company is still hardly generating any sales with its products.
Rivian went public in November and made a brilliant debut. Rivian manufactures electrically powered pick-ups and had sparked the imagination of investors – the US competitor Tesla is by far the most valuable car manufacturer in the world because professional investors are betting on a great future in manufacturers who are purely electric drives. In the meantime, Rivian was even more valuable on the stock exchange than the Volkswagen Group, which plans to deliver 9 million vehicles this year and employs around 675,000 people. The euphoria surrounding the newcomer to the stock exchange subsided somewhat. Most recently, Rivian’s market capitalization was still at $ 97 billion – before it went steeply downhill on Thursday after hours. By comparison, Volkswagen is now at 119 billion euros.
Rivian announced plans to build another factory. The automaker’s second plant is to be built in the state of Georgia. Investments of 5 billion dollars are planned, more than 7,500 people are expected to work there. The factory is expected to produce up to 400,000 cars a year; the first cars are to be manufactured in 2024. The production capacity of the existing plant in Normal in the state of Illinois is to be increased from the previously planned 150,000 to 200,000.