There is only one small problem: it hardly sold a car.
Rivian’s first consumer vehicle, a $ 67,500 electric pickup truck called the R1T with a range of 314 miles, didn’t start rolling off the assembly line until September after repeatedly postponing its deadlines.
“Rivian has a good product, but its ability to manufacture, sell and service these vehicles on a large scale has been completely unproven,” said Richard Windsor, an independent tech analyst. “In my opinion, at this stage in their development, companies have no business with IPOs.”
In fact, selling a vehicle is more than some would-be Tesla imitators have succeeded in doing. The growing interest in electric cars, combined with a market mania for start-ups that hit the public market early via blank check “Spac” listings, has driven a number of names such as Nikola and Lordstown Motors to scores of several in the past year Billions of dollars managed even though they didn’t have any cars to show for it.
The following months were not friendly. Lordstown, a three year old company, is under scrutiny by US regulators and has said it may not have enough money to produce its first vehicle. Nikola was attacked by short sellers who accused him of falsifying footage of his prototype truck in action by rolling it down a hill.
Even if Rivian has not had any income in the past few weeks, it is not a newbie. Scaringe, known as “RJ”, founded the company as Avera Motors in 2009 and graduated in engineering that same year.
For years it lived on the company’s subsistence level, struggling for money, switching between plans for fuel-efficient sports cars and the dream of a high-speed gasoline car before it acquired a former Mitsubishi plant in Illinois and rebranded it as an electric vehicle company.
One of the first big donors was the Saudi billionaire Hassan Jameel, the ex-boyfriend of pop star Rihanna, who gave the company star power when it unveiled its debut car in 2018.
In February 2019, Amazon launched a $ 440 million investment round into the company, putting Rivian in the spotlight for the first time. Six months later, Bezos announced that his company had placed a mammoth order for 100,000 electric vans – the basis for much of the current valuation.
