In the field of trillion-level new energy vehicles, Tesla is not an absolutely unshakable existence, from the whole vehicle to the power battery, Tesla who wants to extend his hand to the whole industry chain will inevitably face the counterattack and competition of the whole industry chain.
Tesla competitors have become the new darlings of the capital circle
In the face of the ability to pay money, Tesla also had to re-examine Rivian as an old rival.
In November 2021, electric vehicle maker Rivian went public on the NASDAQ with $12 billion in funding, making it one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Rivian is included in the MSCI Global Standard Index, effective December 1. On the second day of the issuance, Rivian's valuation climbed all the way, and the first day of the IPO rose by as much as 53%. The second day continued its sharp rise, up 22.1% at $122.99, with a market capitalization of $104.9 billion, surpassing Ford and General Motors.
However, this scenery did not last long, Rivian's stock price then began a long downward road, and just when Rivian was about to fade from people's vision, many investment institutions said that Rivian became its investment target.
After the plunge, Rivian seems to have become a feast for Wall Street capital, and giants such as BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Soros Fund Management, Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, tiger global funds and other giants have all opened positions in The fourth quarter of 2021. Among them, among the top five heavy stocks of soros fund, Rivian ranked first, holding about 19.8357 million shares, with a market value of about 2.057 billion US dollars, accounting for 28.14% of the portfolio.
Especially on Monday, local time in the United States, a number of large pension funds in the United States disclosed the latest position data, in the fourth quarter of 2021, including the California Civil Service Pension Fund, 7 large pension funds have bought the "Tesla killer", the United States electric vehicle startup Rivian stock.
Among them, the California Civil Service Pension Fund manages about $492 billion (about 3.1 trillion yuan) of assets, making it the largest pension fund in the United States. According to holding data, the fund bought more than 305,000 shares of Rivian stock in the fourth quarter of last year, and the market value of the position is about US$32 million (about 200 million yuan) if the closing price of Rivian at the end of last year is $103.69.
In addition, the $191 billion Teacher Retirement System of Texas fund holds 33,000 shares of Rivian.
The market was surprised by the sudden bottom of a newly listed start-up by the usually robust pension fund, and Rivian has not yet achieved a profit, losing more than $2.2 billion in the first three quarters of 2021. This means that the investment risk appetite of some pension funds in the United States is rising, or that There are indeed bright spots in Rivian that attract capital.
The entry of capital has also made people re-examine the electric vehicle company that was once hailed as expected to surpass Tesla.
The name of "Tesla's fierce enemy"
Among the many electric vehicle companies in the world, Rivian can be praised as "Tesla's fierce enemy", which is inseparable from the huge capital behind it.
Rivian Automotive (Rivian) is an American electric vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Elvin, California, founded in 2009. Rivian was committed to building high-performance sports cars in the early days, transformed into pure electric vehicle research and development in 2012, and has announced three products, namely pure electric pickup truck R1T, pure electric SUV R1S and pure electric freight car EDV.In October 2021, Rivian's first model R1T officially opened for delivery, becoming the world's first pure electric pickup truck to achieve mass production; in November 2021, Rivian was successfully listed on the NASDAQ.
Since 2018, Rivian has received a number of large financings from Amazon, Ford Motor, BlackRock, Standard Chartered bank and other financial institutions, further accelerating mass production and delivery, with a cumulative amount of more than 10 billion US dollars. In terms of equity structure, after the company's listing, the proportion of industrial and financial capital is relatively high, and Amazon is the largest single shareholder, holding 19% of the shares. Management has a lower stake, with founder Scarlinch owning 1 percent of the shares and 9 percent of the voting rights.
After Rivian's listing, Amazon/Ford held 19%/8% of the shares respectively, ranking first/second largest shareholders. Rivian cooperates closely with Amazon, Ford and other shareholders, Amazon locked in the priority supply of 100,000 orders for EDV models through the agreement, locking production capacity; Ford through a wholly-owned subsidiary to assist Rivian in developing the prototype of the R1 series and the body-in-white of EDV, and helping Rivain learn system capabilities such as vehicle engineering and supply chain integration. Previously, Ford planned to develop the next generation of pure electric models based on Rivian's Skateboard platform, but for now Ford has announced that it has abandoned the plan.
In addition to the gorgeous capital background, Rivian's focus on the new energy vehicle market segment also gives people great imagination. In the U.S. passenger car market, pickup trucks have always been a popular model, occupying a considerable market share. However, in the field of new energy vehicles, electric pickup trucks are still blank. Rivian CEO Scarlinch said Rivian plans to build a capacity of 1 million vehicles per year by 2030. At present, it has a factory in Illinois, USA, and plans to build a second plant in the United States. At the same time, it will also enter the European and Chinese markets.
But it's important to note that Rivian is far from a full-fledged company. It only started producing and delivering vehicles in September 2021. And there are also huge challenges to expand manufacturing. By the end of October 2021, Rivian had delivered only 156 pickup trucks, the R1T; it plans to start delivering the S.U.V next month. R1S。 However, in a financial document, it is not expected to complete 55,400 orders for trucks and SUVs.
In terms of technology, compared with Tesla's strong "four modernizations" competitiveness, the "skateboard chassis" has become a highlight of Rivian's research and development. Rivian has leveraged its passenger car chassis research and development results and its pure electric + non-bearing characteristics to expand horizontally into the new energy commercial vehicle business. Among them, the "skateboard chassis" is the link between the passenger and commercial vehicle business. We believe that the core of the "skateboard chassis" lies in the development of decoupling, structural independence, business model innovation, and the integration of a new electric drive + EE architecture + wire control system. For Rivian, the advantages include shorter development cycles, increased scalability, lower costs, and more motivation, more space and smarter driving for consumers.
In addition to research and development, the company's production and marketing system is also becoming more and more mature, the prospectus discloses that the self-operated Illinois Normal factory can achieve an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles in 2023, and the sales service adopts the combination of online direct sales + offline user space, focusing on sales efficiency and user experience.
From the perspective of actual production and sales, the decline in Rivian's stock price at the beginning of its listing is easier to understand. Industry insiders pointed out that behind the crazy valuation bubble of 100 billion yuan, it reflects the expectations of capital for the transformation of the automotive industry. New energy vehicles are obviously a track that leads to the future. In the U.S. stock market, Tesla has entered the trillion club, exceeding the market capitalization of the world's five traditional car companies combined. However, the new energy vehicle track is still in the growth stage, and capital also hopes that there will be "catfish" to accelerate the transformation of the industry. With more than 150,000 orders and advanced technology, Rivian is naturally highly expected, but its ability to become the second "Tesla" still faces many challenges.
Where are the Rivians of the continent
Capital and market positioning aside, Rivian's success and range of applications for skateboard chassis. From the perspective of the development of electrification and intelligent integration in the automotive industry, motor modularization, battery and chassis integration, and overall chassis configurability are indeed the future development direction. From the perspective of large logic, automotive companies use skateboard chassis, mainly to reduce the development cycle, to achieve generalization of parts, a small number of parts, skateboard chassis is a way to solve the problem.
Most of the passenger cars in China are load-bearing structures, after all, comfort is the pursuit of most people, and car companies use load-bearing bodies to replace non-carrier bodies in the subdivisions that can be replaced. Only vans and off-road vehicles remain, in order to load, to off-road and cope with harsh roads, there must be a heavy chassis to retain the non-load-bearing body.
Therefore, in the field of passenger cars, it is unlikely to replicate the growth route of Rivian, while in the field of electric trucks, pickup trucks affected by policies are facing the problem of "difficulty in entering the city", and at the user level, affordable vans such as Wuling Hongguang carry the demand of domestic consumers to carry people and pull goods. Under the influence of a variety of factors, pickup trucks still belong to the niche market.
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2020, the cumulative sales of domestic pickup trucks were 491,000 units, an increase of 8.58% year-on-year. In the same period, the total sales volume of mainland automobiles was 25.311 million units. From this calculation, domestic pickup truck sales account for only 1.94% of the overall car market.
However, although the market is growing slowly, the electric pickup truck industry chain has quietly prepared. On February 7, 2022, Tuopu Group announced that it intends to establish a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Tuopu Skateboard Chassis (Ningbo) Co., Ltd. (tentative name) in Hangzhou Bay New Area, Ningbo City, with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan. This means that Tuopu Group will officially enter the skateboard chassis track that is currently on fire.
Prior to this, Tuopu Group has established cooperation with Rivian in the field of skateboard chassis, providing Rivian with lightweight chassis systems, including subframes, control arms, steering knuckles and other products, with a total bicycle value of about 11,000 yuan.
In view of the cooperation experience between Tuopu Group and Rivian in the field of skateboard chassis, as well as the rich product line and chassis adjustment capabilities in the fields of suspension systems, brake-by-wire, steer-by-wire and other fields, Tuopu Group has already possessed the necessary elements to integrate the skateboard chassis and the wire-controlled chassis. The reason why Tuopu Group has set up a new factory in Hangzhou Bay New Area is also aimed at integrating the above modules on the same platform to provide customers with the best performance, quality and cost of skateboard chassis products for customers around and overseas.
Therefore, whether it is an electric pickup truck or a skateboard chassis, the domestic new energy vehicle industry chain itself is ready, with the changes in the market environment, in the future, perhaps electric pickup trucks can also become a new star in the domestic market.