Amazon bought an electric car from rival "influencer" Rivian that fell below the issue price

Shares of electric truck company Rivian plunged on Thursday after Amazon said it would buy electric delivery vehicles from Stallantis, falling at one point to $75.13 a share, down from the company's offering price of $78 two months ago.

On Wednesday, Stellantis announced that it would sell its own electric Ram ProMaster van to Amazon from 2023, putting Stellantis in direct competition with Rivian for Amazon's business, prompting investors to sell Rivian.

Stellantis is a merger of the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler Group (FCA) and the French PSA group (PSA) in 2021, which became the world's fourth largest automaker.

Rivian shares recovered on the day, but still closed down 3 percent at $87.33.

Amazon is Rivian's second-largest shareholder, and in 2019, Amazon awarded Rivian an order for 100,000 electric delivery vehicles, with the first 10,000 vans to be delivered by the end of 2022, a deal that marks The Rivian startup becoming a strong competitor to Tesla or a more established electric car maker and one of the cornerstones of Rivian's soaring stock price during its IPO last November. Last December, Rivian selected Amazon Cloud Technologies as its preferred cloud provider.

But it's becoming increasingly clear that competition from automakers in the electric commercial vehicle space is heating up: General Motors on Wednesday unveiled the electric Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck, a commercial truck starting at $40,000 designed to challenge the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup. Ford said Tuesday it would increase production of the F-150 to meet strong consumer demand.

The Financial Times quoted Stallantis CHIEF Carlos Tavares as saying the company's deal with Amazon would result in "tens of thousands" of electric van sales estimates were "extremely conservative". This means that the size of the order may be comparable to the size of Rivian's deal with Amazon.

According to CNBC, since 2018, Stellantis has delivered tens of thousands of cars to Amazon for last-mile deliveries in North America and Europe. Stellantis said the company developed the upcoming Ram ProMaster with support from Amazon.

As part of a long-term cloud agreement, Amazon and Stellantis will collaborate on the DEVELOPMENT OF THE STLA SmartCockpiT software, which will appear on millions of vehicles starting in 2024, according to a statement. The service will integrate Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, e-commerce, maintenance, navigation, and other elements. Stellantis said the company will move vehicle data to cloud systems, and Amazon will become its preferred vehicle platform cloud provider.

Market-leading Amazon Cloud Services AWS has focused on a wide range of industries in an effort to expand within large companies. Last November, Amazon launched AWS IoT FleetWise, a tool that automakers can use to store and refine vehicle data.