Tesla was the first American electric vehicle manufacturer that operated as a privately-held company for a couple of years.
At the time of its initial public offering (IPO) on June 29, 2010, Tesla (TSLA) had already delivered around 1,400 first-gen Roadsters. With an initial share price of $17, the total market cap of Tesla was around $1.7 billion at the time.
Fast-forward to 2021 and two more electric vehicle manufacturing companies have emerged, Rivian and Lucid Motors.
At the time of its IPO on July 26, 2021, Lucid Motors had delivered 0 vehicles to its customers and still fetched a market cap of $33B at the time. As of today, the share price of Lucid Motors (LCID) is $23.41 with a market cap of $37.89B — still, no vehicles delivered.
However, according to a company press release, the first Lucid Air luxury electric sedan rolled off the assembly line in late September, and deliveries are scheduled to begin in late October.
Rivian on the other hand also filed for an IPO on October 1, 2021 — again, has yet to deliver an R1T electric pickup truck to a customer. Not only that but Rivian has already reported huge losses in its IPO filing (around $1B). With zero vehicle deliveries, Rivian (RIVN) is expected to have a market cap of $80B as public trading of its shares starts.
“These are strange days,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk in response to a tweet that summarized all of the above-mentioned situations, “If it is possible to start an EV company without shipping any cars & get a valuation less than a billion dollars!?,” he further tweeted.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been selling Tesla electric vehicles for almost 13 years now and he knows all the ups and downs of the industry. Learned from his hardships at Tesla, he has always said that making prototypes is easy — production is hard.
“I hope they have a high pain tolerance. Scaling production, supply chain, logistics & service is a world of hurt,” Musk said of what’s coming towards Lucid and Rivian.
Musk has often said that Tesla is responsible for 2/3 of his personal and professional pain throughout his career. The toughest time at Tesla was in 2018 when Musk was sleeping on the factory floor as the automaker was struggling to scale Model 3 production.
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