Three electric vehicle startups, Lucid, Rivian, and VinFast, posted their fourth-quarter results this week amidst a backdrop of souring forecasts on the battery-powered car segment, fueled by lower-than-expected sales and stagnating consumer interest.
Lucid reported quarterly revenues of $157.15 million on Wednesday, down roughly $100 million from 2022. The reduction spurred the company’s losses, which climbed to $654 million for the quarter and $2.8 billion for all of 2023, 38% and 116% greater than the year-prior period, respectively. However, the company’s annual electric vehicle sales rose sharply in comparison to 2022, jumping 37% to 6,001.
Rivian, who in 2021, launched its first product the same year as Lucid, rapidly outpaced its competitor on a sales basis and, while its financial performance was worse in comparison, made notable year-over-year improvements in terms of cost-efficiency. The company generated $1.3 billion in quarterly revenue, nearly double what it made in Q4 2022. Its loss for the period shrank roughly 7% to $1.58 billion, although annual losses widened by approximately $200 million to total $5.4 billion. Rivian sold 50,122 units in 2023, up approximately 206%.
Out of its competitors, Vietnamese electric vehicle brand VinFast suffered the lowest amount in terms of losses, but its financial performance was more mixed on a year-over-year basis than Lucid or Rivian. The company’s Q4 revenue totaled $437 million, up 133% from the last three months of 2022. Its net losses grew by 1.3% to $650 million for the quarter and by 14.7% to $2.39 billion for the full year. VinFast, which also entered its domestic market in 2021 but waited until 2023 to begin delivering its products in the U.S., sold 34,855 units globally in 2023.
All three reports reflect the current state of the electric vehicle market. Sales are certainly up and will continue to rise for the foreseeable future, but profitability for startups and legacy automakers alike remains distant. Surviving the coming years will be challenging for companies that do not have gas-powered car sales to fall back upon. That being said, improvements in infrastructure, product quality, affordability, and driving ranges could each spur demand rapidly once they are implemented; the sooner those achievements are made, the faster brands like VinFast, Rivian, and Lucid will be able to achieve favorable financial results.
