Gary Zhou 
Tesla CEO Elon Musk wished Rivian the best recently. Musk also gave his input into Rivian’s tough road ahead, despite its recent achievements.
“I hope they’re able to achieve high production & breakeven cash flow. That is the true test,” Elon Musk said about Rivian.
Rivian’s IPO started at $78 per share, valuing the company at $77 billion on a fully diluted basis. As of this writing, RIVN stock price is up to $122.99, valuing the company at $104.89 billion.
While Elon Musk showed his support for Rivian with his well wishes, the Tesla CEO also reminded everyone of the challenges that Rivian is still set to face, specifically in ramping production.
“There have been hundreds of automotive startups, both electric & combustion, but Tesla is only American carmaker to reach high volume production & positive cash flow in past 100 years,” he wrote.
Before the IPO, Rivian started delivering its all-electric R1T pickup truck, made for outdoor adventure. The base price of the R1T is $67,600, and Rivian has delivered over 150 pickup trucks so far.
However, Rivian is currently focusing most of its resources on producing and delivering the first batch of vans to Amazon. Jeff Bezos invested heavily in Rivian, ordering 100,000 delivery vans from the company a few years ago. Rivian aims to fulfill Amazon’s delivery van order by the end of the decade.
As Elon Musk pointed out, Rivian has some tough terrain to traverse in the future. The Tesla CEO has stated many times in the past that while building prototypes is easy, ramping production has many challenges.
Although, Rivian’s success may push other electric car startups to strive harder. Tesla kickstarted the latest EV revolution, and Rivian might be the company that shows other startups it is possible to follow in Tesla’s footsteps.
Recently, Tesla’s Head of Investor Relations, Martin Viecha, reminded everyone that other EV companies aren’t the competition right now. While it is easy to form a narrative that EV players are competing against each other in the electric vehicle segment, it should be noted that companies like Tesla are actually trying to break into the general vehicle segment, where ICE still dominates.
“For the past 5 years, I’ve been asked some version of ‘and what about all the competitors’ pretty much daily. Well over 90% of cars sold this year will be ICEs. It’s the ICEs that lose share to all competitive EVs,” Viecha said. “It’s surprising that this is still not an established view.”
