Introduction: New energy vehicle market - where miracles occur!
On November 10, rivian Automotive, an electric pickup startup, officially went public. On the day of listing, although the stock price experienced a high opening and low movement, the closing price was still as high as 100.73 US dollars / share, and the market value was 85.908 billion US dollars. It became the largest initial public offering (IPO) in the United States since Facebook went public and the world's largest this year to date.
But this was only the beginning of Rivian's crazy performance, and in the following days, Rivian's market value surpassed that of Senior Old-school car companies such as Ford, BMW, and Daimler. By November 16, the whole performance was pushed to a climax, and Rivian's market value broke through the $140 billion mark shortly after the opening of the market, successfully surpassing the Volkswagen Group to become the world's third-largest car company after Tesla and Toyota, and ended the day with a market value of $152 billion.
Listed on November 10, by November 16, less than a week later, Rivian had evolved from an obscure beginner to the world's third-largest car company that even Ford, BMW, and Daimler had to look up to. What kind of fairy car company is Rivian?
In fact, the listing of new forces to create high stock prices has been common in recent years, and most of them are still in the state of zero mass production and zero delivery. So Rivian, now the world's third-largest car company, is also a new force for the white wolf with empty gloves? The professor can only deny half of this question.
Why only half? The reason is that Rivian has "passed" the delivery mark, and Rivian is currently launching three models, namely the electric pickup R1T, the electric SUV R1S and the electric van EDV. As of the end of October, a total of 180 R1T models had been produced, of which 156 had been delivered.
But the so-called delivery does not informally transfer the right of use to the consumer, but to the employees within the company. The Rivian side can certainly be called delivery, but I prefer to understand it as a comprehensive test of the final product conducted by employees before the vehicle is delivered to the consumer. To put it bluntly, the vehicle is still in the testing stage, and Tesla should feel the same way. From a consumer's point of view, Rivian has actually delivered zero so far.
So why is Rivian still in third place in the world with only 156 "deliveries"? In my opinion, first, Rivian's current models, R1S and R1T, have accumulated 55,400 pre-orders in the United States and Canada.
Amazon, as the majority shareholder, also placed an order for 100,000 electric delivery trucks, and also placed an order for 100,000 Model 3s with Hertz, a US car rental leader, and listed it as the largest order for electric vehicles in history.
Second, Rivian has a number of giants, including Amazon and Ford, to endorse it. Third, Rivian's main focus on the field of electric pickup trucks will be the mainstream of the future North American market, which is best evidenced by the rich pickup culture in North America and the cumulative orders of Tesla Cyberruck electric pickup trucks.
Obviously, capital will not miss any outlet in the market, any potential quality stock. Rivian's response to the voice to go high and even to the third place in the world should not be said to be a miracle, but a normal phenomenon in the capital market.
Don't look at the surface of the Rivian scenery, but in fact, the current Rivian also encountered a lot of new forces that survived the car in the early stage of development, and even now face the dilemma of large-scale mass production and loss.
In this regard, Rivian also admitted in the prospectus that he has not yet obtained substantial income and has been facing losses. According to the prospectus, in 2019 and 2020, Rivian's net loss was $426 million and $1.018 billion, respectively, while in the first half of this year, Rivian's net loss was $994 million. Another $1.28 billion is expected to burn in the third quarter, while revenue is only between $0 and $1 million. Today, the company has total assets of $6.491 billion and total liabilities of $972 million.
In addition, Rivian also said in the prospectus that the company has no previous experience in mass production of cars, so it cannot quickly achieve large-scale delivery. For Rivian, the biggest difficulty at the moment is large-scale delivery, and its factory has not yet reached the maximum capacity, and it is expected that large-scale delivery will take some time.
Rivian further added, "We expect gross margin per vehicle to be negative in the short term, as the fixed costs of our investment in automotive technology, manufacturing capabilities and charging infrastructure will be amortized on small batches until we put the product into mass production." ”
Based on the above situation, many industry experts believe that Rivian's stock price is too inflated, mainly because of the bubble in the electric vehicle industry and Amazon's strong support for Rivian.
And Rivian also generously admits that he is a growth stage company with a history of losses, and expects to generate a lot of expenses and sustained losses in the future. In terms of research and development, compared with the R&D expenses of 292 million US dollars in the first half of last year, the company's research and development expenses rose to 683 million US dollars in the first half of this year.
Although sustained high R&D investment will directly increase the loss gap of corporate funds, a company can not only see the immediate benefits, a mature enterprise has always pursued long-termism. Without attaching importance to research and development, it will not produce good technology, and without good technology, a car company will lack core competitiveness, and such a car company is doomed to go far.
So even though the company continues to lose money, Rivian still hasn't given up his insistence on research and development, and has to admire Rivian's far-sighted vision of taking precautions.
Thanks to this, Rivian has been able to achieve full-stack self-development, and has achieved self-sufficiency in powertrains, battery technology, in-vehicle infotainment and connectivity systems, integrated safety systems, chassis and ADAS systems, including vehicle electronic control units, battery packs, drive units, chassis, autonomous driving systems Driver+, etc.
In automotive electronics, for example, Rivian has designed a range of ECUs covering autonomous driving, battery management, digital experience, body control, vehicle dynamics, and telematics.
In terms of battery systems, Rivian has developed its own battery modules and battery packs, and in order to ensure the safety of the vehicle during off-road, it is specially equipped with a bottom guard to absorb and transfer impact forces.
In terms of electric drives, Rivian's independently designed inverters allow for better control of the motor, providing better power and drivability for the vehicle.
Rivian has also independently developed a set of L2 level autonomous driving functions called Driver+, which will be equipped with 11 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 5 millimeter wave radars and a high-precision GPS with functions such as automatic emergency braking, lane keeping assist, highway assist (combination of lateral and vertical control) and parking assist.
In terms of charging networks, Rivian is building its own charging network, planning to build charging stations on main roads and major highways first, and 600 charging stations by 2023.
When one person begins to be jealous of another person, there will be all kinds of yin and yang strange behaviors, such as watching Rivian's stock price like Musk sitting on a rocket, and can't help but ridicule and ridicule Rivian one after another.
I tweeted that I don't want to be unreasonable, but they (Rivian) should deliver at least one car for every $1 billion valuation before the IPO. Even if a car is worth $1 billion, the Rivian valuation of a car that has not been delivered cannot be so high.
In response to the questions of netizens, he also expressed the hope that Rivian would increase production as soon as possible and enter a profitable state. Improving production capacity and breaking even is the real test that the company faces. There were hundreds of electric car and internal combustion engine startups, but only Tesla has managed to push production to a market-oriented scale and become profitable, and Rivian is still in its infancy.
In addition, as early as late March this year, there were media reports that Tesla was preparing to sue Rivian because it was suspected that former Tesla employees helped Rivian steal trade secrets. In the preliminary ruling, The Santa Clara Superior Judge rejected Rivian's dismissal of the allegation. However, Tesla also sued 7 former employees, which was also dismissed by the judge.
In this regard, I just want to say that not inviting people to be jealous is a mediocrity.
Through the sudden rise of Rivian, it can be seen that new forces are subverting the car market. What it has done is a revolution in the rules created by the traditional old cannon over the past century, including capital investment, car-making models, sales and after-sales.
First of all, for capital pushers, in the past, to invest in a car company, it would value its historical heritage and brand appeal. But what attracts capital today is the company, which can paint a grand vision for the market and consumers, how much room for imagination there is in the future, and the ability to tell stories. The capitalists purely regard these new forces to build cars as one of the investment projects, investing in concepts rather than products, and then they will use their usual tricks in the financial market, hype companies, push up stock prices, and complete the harvest, which will not involve too many automotive elements.
Just as capital chose Tesla at the beginning, not all new forces are like Tesla, who can use capital to achieve their own technological accumulation and self-sufficiency. More often, once the capital withdraws, the new forces that are squeezed out will find that they are just a tool for the capital to realize the accumulation of wealth, and they will be discarded when they have no use value, which will eventually lead to a chicken feather in the new energy market.
Also highly sought after in addition to the new forces to build cars, there are also traditional car companies that have a bright performance in the new energy market, as well as associated enterprises related to new energy vehicles. For example, BYD and Ningde era, both of which are boosted by capital, have repeatedly reached new market capitalizations. The former's market value once broke through the 900 billion yuan mark, and the latter exceeded trillion yuan. But the tragic situation of chicken feathers in a place will definitely not appear in the BYD and Ningde eras.
The second is the change in the model of car building, taking the Skateboard Architecture advocated by Rivian as an example. It is an integrated, all-in-one chassis architecture that integrates components such as batteries, electric drivetrains, suspensions, brakes, etc. into the chassis, and then creates models with different shapes based on this platform. In addition, it can be openly licensed to third-party manufacturers for use.
If Tesla decouples software and hardware through the practice of software-defined cars, it will push the automotive market into the software-defined era.
Then the emergence of the skateboard chassis architecture can achieve the decoupling of the design of the upper and lower car bodies. Because the battery, motor, frame, and suspension will all be integrated into the car body, this part is fixed for any vehicle that applies the architecture. Car companies only need to focus on the body of the car and use intelligence to further optimize the user's daily car use scenario.
When the upper and lower car bodies are completely separated, and then combined with the L5 level unmanned driving that will eventually be achieved. At that time, the car will no longer be a driving machine, but will truly transform into a mobile home.
In the foreseeable future, the skateboard chassis architecture with low cost, high universal rate and short cycle advantage will be favored by more and more car companies.
However, some professional engineers have questioned the skateboard chassis architecture, arguing that "it will harm a number of key development areas, such as collision protection, heating and ventilation, noise vibration and unevenness (NVH), and manipulation." ”
Finally, like Tesla, it adopts a direct-operated model, managing all sales, deliveries, service operations, and resales internally without relying on a network of franchisees or other third parties.
Consumers can buy a car directly from the Internet to place an order to buy a car, and even after-sales service can be solved online, thereby greatly reducing the time cost.
Electric pickup truck, listed in the United States, it seems that Rivian is far away from the Chinese market? Non-also, in fact, the Rivians are all around us, such as ideals, Weilai, Weima have the shadow of Rivians. Although they have different names and different models, they all share a common title and new forces to build cars, and they also have the determination to subvert the tradition and create a new era.
Whether it is Chinese or foreign consumers, they do not need a new force that will only tell a good story to build a car, and only the new forces that personally build cars for serious car construction can be recognized.