A Truist survey of prospective car buyers showed that Rivian has made significant progress growing brand awareness for its electric trucks.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Electric-trucking startup
Rivian Automotive
is making headway cracking the difficult, and lucrative, U.S. pickup-truck market. That’s good news for shares.
Truist analyst Jordan Levy, on Wednesday, noted the firm’s survey of prospective car buyers that uncovered a couple of key points for electric-vehicle investors.
“Results show (1) Rivian (ticker: RIVN) has made significant progress growing its brand awareness, and (2) hurdles for consumer adoption of EV pickups lower than we’d anticipated,” wrote Levy.
Rivian is well known and people like electric trucks. What’s more, What’s more, Levy’s survey found that Rivian and
Tesla
(TSLA) were tied for the number-one electric-truck brand consumers were considering.
Ford Motor
(F) and
General Motors
(GM) were about tied for third.
Stellantis
‘ (STLA) Ram brand came in sixth behind
Toyota Motor
(TM).
Levy rates Rivian stock at Buy, and has a $50 price target for shares. His bullish insight seems to be helping the stock Wednesday. Shares are up about 5.5% at $20.56 a piece. The
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
are down 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively.
The report revealed some other things about truck buyers. About 6% surveyed plan to make their next pickup electric. That might not seem like a lot, but electric-truck penetration in the U.S is starting at a very low level.
About 2.7 million pickup trucks were sold in the U.S. in 2022, accounting for roughly 20% of all new vehicles sold.
Rivian sold about 10,000 trucks in the U.S., giving it about 0.4% market share. (Rivian also sells trucks in Canada.) Ford sold 15,617 all-electric F-150 Lightnings in 2022, giving it a market share of about 0.6%.
Overall, about 1% of all truck sales in the U.S. were electric this past year.
Ford sold 653,957 F-series trucks overall. It captured about 24% of the market. The Lightning accounted for about 2.4% of Ford’s truck sales.
Looking ahead, Ford plans for the production rate of F-150 Lightnings to reach about 150,000 annually by the end of 2023. That implies deliveries of roughly 80,000 units for that year.
That could be as much as 11% of total F-150 sales, quite a jump year over year.
As for Rivian, Wall Street expects it to ship about 60,000 vehicles in 2023. That will be a mix of SUVs, trucks, and delivery vehicles for
Amazon.com
(AMZN). Rivian didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about its production mix.
But that 60,000 vehicles could yield 20,000 trucks for the U.S. Add in production from the Chevy Silverado and the
Tesla
Cybertruck, and the U.S. truck market could see EV penetration of about 4% in 2023.
Rivian is doing well so far as a trucking startup, considering that incumbents GM,
Stellantis,
and Ford account for roughly 83% of the truck market in the U.S., while Toyota has about 11% market share.
The market will become more fragmented. GM’s all-electric Chevy Silverado debuts in 2023, and Stellantis’ electric Ram Rev debuts in 2024. Meanwhile, Toyota doesn’t have an all-electric truck on the horizon.
The U.S. EV truck market is growing, and increasingly competitive place. It’s a good thing Rivian was early, and that customers know its name.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
Credit: marketwatch.com