Their market cap was less than $5 billion. There were less than 100 million shares outstanding. Buying some shares was a big risk - it was either going to 0 or going to the moon. But when you bought shares, you weren't super diluted. It seemed like a reasonable bet for a small amount of my portfolio.
At >$100B market cap, I am having a hard time making that same value judgement on Rivian. Their factory has a capacity of 150,000 vehicles; they say it can be increased to 200,000 and in less than 10 years they can be running at 1 million vehicles per year. If they make it, they will be a very valuable company!!! Is it worth taking that bet, right now? Wouldn't I be better off waiting for more confirmation?
They have a huge backlog on every vehicle and they have huge new factories including integrated comming online very soon.
They have further invested vertically integrating not just batteries but cathode and anode manufacturing as well.
What exactly is Musk doing wrong in terms of scaling and logistics?
The Model 3 was a significantly higher volume and lower cost car than the Model S that came before it.
Eventually they hit a wall in terms of the cost of the raw materials and labor to build the battery and drive train, but I'm not convinced they are there yet.
Also, TSLA could very well find a Tim Cook to Elon Musk's Steve Jobs: someone familiar with logistics to take over the vision and mass produce it.