Electric carmaker With very few sales, Lucid overtakes Ford on Wall Street

(New York) Just weeks after producing their first electric vehicles, Lucid overtook venerable automaker Ford on Wall Street on Tuesday, while Rivian is now worth more on the stock market than the German Volkswagen group.

The action of the American group Lucid, which has benefited from the announcement of an increase in reservations for its electric sedans in recent weeks, ended up 23.71% at 55.52 dollars. This corresponded to a capitalization of approximately 90 billion dollars. Ford, which has recently invested heavily in electric vehicles, was at the same time worth 79 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.

The manufacturer of Rivian vans and vans, for its part, appreciated by 15.16% to 172.01 dollars, without any particular news. Its price has more than doubled since its IPO last Wednesday and it is now worth $152 billion on the stock market, more than Volkswagen.

Emission-neutral vehicle sector head Tesla also benefited from the prevailing enthusiasm, climbing 4.08% even as, according to a new stock market filing from Monday, its boss Elon Musk has sold a total of about $7.8 billion worth of shares since last week.

The group recently entered the small club of companies worth more than 1000 billion dollars on Wall Street.

For Lucid, the September release of the first vehicles for customers on the assembly line at its Casa Grande plant in Arizona has sparked interest: reservations have soared 30% since the end of September, to more than 17,000 reservations currently for a car costing at least 77,400 dollars in the United States and which can go up to 169,000 dollars.

$232,000 in revenue

During the quarter, the group received certification from the American Environment Agency ensuring that its Lucid Air sedan could travel more than 752 kilometers on a single charge, and up to 837 kilometers for the most efficient model.

Lucid Air was also named Car of the Year 2022 by trade magazine MotorTrend on Monday.

This is the first time that a car manufacturer has won this bonus with its first model and this "should further increase bookings ⁱⁿ the 4th quarter", underlined Garrett Nelson of the CFRA firm.

Lucid, which again posted a net loss of $524 million in the third quarter on revenue of just $232,000, still expects to produce 20,000 units in 2022 despite supply and logistics issues.

The company is in the process of expanding its sole factory to add 265,000 square meters, which should allow it to reach a production capacity of 90,000 vehicles per year by the end of 2023.

Lucid "has the only electric vehicle model on the market today capable of competing in the same league as Tesla's cars in terms of range, power and other qualities," Nelson said.

The group's stock initially stagnated after arriving on Wall Street in late July via the merger with an already listed company (SPAC) at around $25 before starting to gain momentum in late October.

Rivian for its part has not stopped climbing since its arrival with a bang on the NASDAQ less than a week ago, even if the company, still largely loss-making, plans to have delivered only 1,000 vehicles by the end of the year. end of the year. When groups like Ford or Volkswagen sell several million a year.

The niche is still tiny, with electric vehicles accounting for just 3% of sales currently in the United States, and needs to prove its viability over the long term. But it attracts investors looking for investments in "green" companies or wishing to benefit from a stock market boom similar to that of Tesla.