Electric vehicle manufacturer has been made public over the course of a week, but its stock price has more than doubled in that time, valuing Rivian at more than $140 billion – just ahead of Volkswagen ($139 billion), and in third place behind Toyota (306 billion USD) and Tesla (1 trillion USD).
On Tuesday, shares opened 6% higher, at about $159 a share. When the company launched last week, it valued its stock at $78.
Rivian only made its first truck deliveries two months ago, and most of those deliveries were to Rivian employees, according to SEC filings. However, it attracts the interest of large investors with Outstanding backing from Amazon, bought 20% shares in 2019 and Ford (NS). Jeff Bezos is a big fan and has been seen taking his fellow space explorers to and from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas in Rivian’s signature truck.
The hype about electric cars is nothing new – many analysts, and even Tesla founder Elon Musk, have argued that the company’s Tesla valuation is overinflated. But its shares continued to climb as Wall Street envisioned a future in which all-electric vehicles were the norm. Under President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, signed into law the secondAbout $7.5 billion is being spent building a nationwide network of plug-in electric vehicle chargers.
Investors who may have missed Tesla a decade ago don’t want to miss out on another hot EV pioneer.
Rivian also boasts a potential advantage over Tesla in the US market, in part because it is making it difficult for non-Tesla, or even anti-Tesla, herd.
Rivian’s main product isn’t just any EV – it’s a pickup truck. This is important in the US market, as the three most popular vehicles in the US are the Ford F-150, Chevy Silverado, and Ram, in that order, according to Edmunds research, according to Edmunds research.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Rivian did not bring its car to market. It has been updated to note that the company made its first deliveries in September 2021.
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