new York Shareholders of US electrical start-ups had to have strong nerves on Thursday: the shares of Lucid, Nikola and Lordstown fell to new lows by the end of the market.
Lucid fell almost 12 percent on Wall Street to $8.79. Nikola shares fell about six percent to $ 2.20. Lordstown shares fell more than 11 percent to $1.09.
The papers of the once hotly traded manufacturers of electric cars, trucks and pick-up trucks are thus dangerously approaching their respective all-time lows. In some cases, it also went down in after-hours trading.
All three start-ups went public with the help of so-called spacs, new types of stock exchange vehicles. For the shareholders, the investments, after peaks in the meantime, hardly proved to be sustainable. Nikola shares alone rose to $65 in June 2020, but never got back to that level. As different as the companies are: the crash on Thursday can be explained by all three with missed annual targets for 2022.
Lucid shipments far below plan
Lucid from ex-Tesla engineer Peter Rawlinson from California was only able to sell 7180 of his Air sedans and thus only achieved a little more than a third of the originally planned annual production.
The prospects for 2023 are not much better. Lucid shares plummeted after the company only forecast production of up to 14,000 vehicles this year. The background is also a price war in the industry triggered by Tesla. The electric pioneer Tesla produced a total of 1.37 million vehicles last year.
Lucid’s annual sales exceeded $608 million in 2022, up from $27 million the previous year. Net loss fell to $1.3 billion from $2.5 billion a year earlier. “The past year has been a challenge for everyone,” said Rawlinson. “Our goal for 2023 is to increase our sales and marketing efforts.”
Nikola struggles with production
Arizona-based Nikola produced 133 Tre BEV electric trucks last year, about a quarter of the number the company originally planned. Nikola also only delivered 20 trucks to dealers because demand fell sharply. The company had lowered its delivery forecast twice in the past year and is still below the 300 deliveries it predicted in November.
Lucid never reached its post-IPO highs again.
(Photo: Reuters)
Nikola does not expect strong growth in 2023 either. The company said it aims to deliver between 250 and 350 battery-powered trucks in 2023. Nikola’s greatest hopes now rest on the hydrogen truck Tre FCEV, whose production is scheduled to start in the second half of the year. If all goes well, 125 to 150 hydrogen trucks should be delivered by the end of the year.
Among other things, Nikola is building several hydrogen hubs to help the new technology achieve a breakthrough. This also includes mobile hydrogen filling stations. “Overall, we have made significant progress both on the truck and on the energy infrastructure front,” explained Nikola boss Michael Lohscheller on Thursday. Sales will be increased.
Nikola also wants to start installing an automated assembly line for battery packs. By the fourth quarter of the year, this should save about $105,000 in battery module costs for each e-truck.
Nikola also wants to reduce its costs. Sales in the fourth quarter of 2022 had only reached $6.5 million, analysts had expected almost five times as much. The loss per share was 37 cents, which was still lower than expected.
Lordstown stops production
The worst news came from Ohio-based electric pickup startup Lordstown on Thursday. The manufacturer announced that it has paused production and shipments to customers since January due to performance and quality issues. 19 vehicles also had to be recalled.
Lordstown Motors also built just 31 endurance pickups in 2022, a fraction of the 500 they had planned. “While our experienced team has made significant progress in addressing the underlying component and vehicle subsystem issues affecting the Endurance build schedule,” said Lordstown CEO Edward Hightower on Thursday. Nevertheless, one wants to solve possible problems first before “deliveries to customers are resumed”. Lordstown intends to present its annual balance sheet for 2022 on March 6th. Then there should be an update on the status of the problems.
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The examples show that “production hell”, the costly and risky ramping up of production, remains the biggest problem for the once hotly traded US electrical start-ups. The competition doesn’t sleep either: classic car manufacturers such as Ford and GM are celebrating delivery records with all-electric versions of their popular pick-up trucks, for example.
With agency material.
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