What's going on?

Rivian gave a worse-than-expected update late last week, but the carmaker�s lacking all the right stuff it needs to put itself back together again.

What does this mean?

Rivian�s first quarter as a public company was destined to be tough: it admitted in December that it wasn�t going to make enough electric vehicles (EVs) to reach its 2021 production targets. So with only 909 EVs delivered last quarter, Rivian brought in just $54 million in sales � 10% lower than analysts were expecting.

Rivian�s 83,000 customer pre-orders might sound like the road to recovery, but it just can�t make enough cars to keep up: it�s only made about 1,400 so far this year. And don�t expect many more anytime soon: it said it�ll struggle to get key parts for its EVs while supply issues continue, so it�s halved this year�s production expectations to 25,000.

Why should I care?

For markets: Buyers are moving on.
Rivian boasted a $153 billion market value at its peak last year, but that�s since dropped to under $40 billion (tweet this). After all, it�s had its fair share of problems on top of those production issues. For one, Rivian�s proposed price hike brought about intense backlash from some customers earlier this month, with plenty of them canceling their orders. And for another, Amazon � which agreed to buy 100,000 vans from Rivian � said in January that it�ll also start buying electric vans from rival carmaker Stellantis in the future, passing up any more orders with Rivian.

The bigger picture: Follow the market leader.
Rivian�s taking a leaf out of Tesla�s book: it announced plans to start using new LFP batteries in its EVs, just like the market leader did back in October. Looks like the right time to switch: the batteries sacrifice some driving range, sure, but they don�t use nickel or cobalt ��two key battery metals that have soared in price since war broke out in Europe.