Rivian, a maker of electric trucks that went public in April, is set to see its shares soar on their first day of trading on Tuesday. The company’s shares were priced at $19 per share, well above what analysts had been expecting, and CAA Equities Group, a private equity firm, purchased 19 million shares.
Rivian, which recently said it raised more than $100 million, is believed to be the first electric-truck maker to go public. Like other electric-transportation companies like Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo, Rivian is building autonomous electric trucks. Its trucks, which do not have a steering wheel or a shifter, can travel up to 300 miles on a single charge and reach speeds up to 70 miles per hour. While the company is pursuing software, it intends to sell trucks that work with a traditional cab, not its autonomous technology.
As someone who has driven around in on-demand electric vehicles, and cheered the roll-out of more efficient vehicles — electrification, self-driving and maybe even micro-mobility. Could Rivian possibly be the future of these things? It may not have yet taken the next leap toward a fully-transportation-as-a-service relationship, but one truck from Rivian appeared to be quite spry. Let’s hope one of them travels the stretch where I live. (Recently, I’ve been driving my daughter’s new Prius on the way to and from school. It drives pretty well in traffic, too, as you can see.)