OK, so its an interesting and on-trend pun, but in all seriousness, there is very much to be excited about for electric vehicle manufacturers at the moment.
Rivian, the American electric truck manufacturer that suddenly appeared from out of nowhere last year has been on an absolute roll this week.
Stock is up an astonishing 15.09% compared to yesterday's close, which is very interesting considering that this dramatic rise in the price of Rivian stock happened on the very same day that Rivian's talks with Samsung SDI about a battery joint venture concluded with no deal as Samsung SDI considered Rivian's terms for the deal to be unacceptable.
Currently, Samsung SDI supplies Rivian with 2170-type cylindrical cells, so there is an existing business arrangement, but it is purely a supplier / customer agreement and not an actual joint venture.
Perhaps investors are more excited that Rivian, an ultra-modern electric vehicle firm with an up-to-the-minute ethos, is interest in going into battery cell production at a time during which electric vehicle mania is sweeping the world and the race between technology firms and car manufacturers to be able to extend the range offered by lithium batteries is very hot indeed.
Rivian is clearly very confident in its commercial approach toward battery production, as some of the terms that dissuaded Samsung SDI from proceeding with the proposed joint venture was that Rivian had reportedly wanted to stipulate a transfer of the battery making technology to Rivian, rights to inspect the interior of factories, and no definite contract on the battery volume.
Whether Rivian took that hard line stance because it knows the value of the future potential of battery innovation for electric cars, or whether it wants to partner with an existing expert and then internalise the tech and brand it during Rivian's aggressive move into a new market that it created, is a matter for debate but either of those would be positives.
You may say that Tesla disrupted this space, and then Ford capitalised on it with the new fully electric F150 which means electric power for America's most popular vehicle, but really it was Rivian that brought the electric truck concept into being as it is far more intriguing than the ill-fated Tesla effort, and is a bit different to America's old favourite F150.
Rivian had been courting the media, too. In Britain, the Rivian truck featured in Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman's "Long Way Up" series in which the two motorcycling movie stars made their way from southern Argentina to Los Angeles using electric Harley Davidson motorcycles, and in doing so wanted to ensure that the support trucks were fully electric as well as the motorcycles, so Rivian built them a special truck for the journey.
This type of media attention shows Rivian's determination to do what Tesla did but for the truck world.
For that reason, it is easy to see why the stock is rising so rapidly.
