COole cafés, casual breakfast bars, hip fashion stores, organic supermarkets and designer furniture – those looking for the latest trends in Los Angeles will find them around Abbot-Kinney-Boulevard in Venice. All the more confused, the strollers stop in front of the factory row, where a polished pick-up is basking in the sun. In the rest of the USA, flatbed trucks may dominate the streetscape, but here on the California coast it can be a Mercedes, a Porsche or, of course, a Tesla.
However, the showpiece is no ordinary pick-up. What is exhibited in the so-called Community Space and admired by dozens of high-income earners early in the morning is a Rivian R1T, which three years after the debut of the first study has blossomed into something like the iPhone under the pickup truck: It looks cool, drives with its electric drive clean – and is absolutely hip. Unlike the even more spectacular Cybertruck from Tesla, the R1T is even available. While Elon Musk is lagging behind his schedule, Rivian has the first hundred copies of the high-tech truck with up to 800 hp and a range of over 600 kilometers on the streets. And there are more every day. The factory has a capacity of 150,000 cars per year, and the order books are said to have 50,000 prospective buyers who have to pay at least $ 67,500 for the first series, the proud 75,000 and later still at least 67,500 dollars.
Not only the buyers are enthusiastic, but even more so the stock exchange traders. As soon as the start-up, which was nurtured with the support of Amazon, was listed on Wall Street for the first time, Rivian’s value skyrocketed. At times over $ 130 billion, the newcomer was sometimes traded higher than BMW, VW and Daimler.
The company from Plymouth, Michigan, is following the example of Tesla. Because in the year 15 after the premiere of the roadster, at that time a handcrafted Lotus Elise – company boss Elon Musk is celebrated as the messiah of the mobility revolution, his company is the most valuable car manufacturer in the world. The fact that the company has not yet adhered to a schedule doesn’t seem to bother the analysts any more than the minimal profits.
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The new Big 3
Is that why Tesla is overrated? Not if you look at what Elon Musk has achieved in the meantime. Tesla operates or builds gigafactories on all three continents with a significant automotive market. Despite the corona and the chip crisis, they will probably emit almost a million vehicles this year. Nobody has a denser charging network and the market share is increasing. It feels like the Tesla Model 3 is now more present on the streets of Los Angeles than any Toyota, in Germany the Model 3 came dangerously close to the VW Golf in September.
The outstanding pick-up has not yet been taken into account. But while the battle for the favor of the settlers of the modern age will soon flare up between Tesla and Rivian, a third newcomer is already making itself strong: Lucid. The company from Newark, California, run by the former Tesla manager Peter Rawlinson, started delivering the first Lucid Air a few days ago, which is at the top of the PS pyramid: the debut, which costs at least 169,000 dollars, has almost 1,100 PS with a range of up to 830 kilometers, all other electric cars look old. More and, above all, cheaper models are to follow in quick succession, with which Lucid first wants to make mass and then cash. In the meantime, they were traded on the stock exchange with a value of 60 billion dollars.
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