Rivian, for one, spends over twice as much to build a car than they end up selling it for. The disparity is larger than Tesla's has ever been, as I recall, and there's every reason to believe they can't simply scale their way out of it. They have to figure out how to fundamentally build the car using less than half the effort and material it takes today.
Maybe its incumbent automakers finally ramping up the competition and putting electric vehicles on the road. Telsa has probably been overvalued for a while and needed to come back to earth but between their R&D and massive lead in charging networks I still think they have a bright future. I think the R1T is the coolest truck on the market right now and the R1S is my most desired suv but now that all of the incumbents are starting to ship electric trucks its going to be hard for them to compete. Those vehicles are like $100k+ with a reasonable configuration. I don't understand Lucid at all.
I think competition is the key. 2022 was the year that we started to really see the incumbents flex their muscle and prove that they could build just as good an EV as a dedicated EV manufacturer. Combine that with their proven ability to build cars profitably and it starts to make the future of the startup manufacturers look pretty bleak. It's an extremely competitive market with a huge barrier to entry.
My suspicion is that in the next 5 years or so, Rivian, Lucid, and similar startups will be defunct. I expect Tesla to persist long term, as their financials are decent now. Though I think their product strategy is very non-conventional and if consumers aren't convinced by it then it could be a stumbling block to their future success.
> Rivian, Lucid, and similar startups will be defunct.
I expect some will be bought out, and a brand of someone else. Some will be defunt as in bankrupt. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them survives as a small niche manufacture.
Lucid sold 6000 cars last year. They are going to go bankrupt in 2023 or at the very least, common shareholders are going to get wiped out by debtholders.
