Elon Musk On Valuations Of Tesla Rivals Lucid And Rivian Says 'These Are Strange Days'

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Thursday took a shot at the valuations of rivals Rivian Automotive Inc. and Lucid Air Inc LCID.

What Happened: Musk was responding to a tweet that compared the delivery numbers and the valuations of Tesla when it went public to those of the two rivals.

If it possible to start an EV company without shipping any cars & get a valuation less than a billion dollars!?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2021

Lucid is a pre-production electric vehicle maker that went public in July in a SPAC with Michael Klein’s Churchill Capital Corp IV at a valuation of $33 billion. 

Rivian, which is backed by Amazon.com Inc AMZN and Ford Motor Co F, is said to be eyeing raising $80 billion in the IPO. The electric vehicle startup in September started rolling out its highly anticipated R1T plug-in pickup.

Tesla had delivered 1,400 electric cars when it went public in June 2010 at a valuation of $1.7 billion, the tweet noted. Tesla’s current market cap is at around $803 billion.

Musk said "these are strange days" as companies that have not shipped any cars are able to secure valuations in billions of dollars. 

See Also: Ford Exits Rivian Board Ahead Of EV Startup's IPO

Why It Matters: This is not the first time Musk has made a comment on Rivian’s expected valuation. In August, Musk said Rivian should have delivered at least one vehicle per billion of its valuation before its IPO. 

Don’t want to be unreasonable, but maybe they should be required to deliver at least one vehicle per billion dollars of valuation *before* the IPO?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2021

The electric vehicle makers have scored valuations near to legacy rivals like Ford, which has a valuation of about $61 billion, and General Motors Co’s GM, which has a valuation above $80 billion, while having made a fraction of the sales on optimism surrounding the roles electric vehicles would play in the future of mobility.

Price Action: Tesla shares closed 0.89% higher at $818.32 on Thursday.

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Photo: Courtesy of Nvidia Corp. via Flickr