Good morning! It’s Monday, November 11, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Tesla Stock Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap
Tesla’s market cap has surpassed $1 trillion following former President Donald Trump’s election victory on November 5. It rallied 29 percent following Tuesday’s result. That should put the “Is Tesla a meme stock” debate to rest once and for all, even if CEO Elon Musk is slated to play a huge part in Trump’s second administration.
Following November 5’s close, Tesla had a market cap of $807.1 billion. At the time of writing this story, that number is now $1.01 trillion. Before last week’s massive rally, shares of the carmaker were up about 1 percent on the year. That number is now 30 percent year to date. From CNBC:
Tesla rejoins a growing club of tech names that are now worth more than $1 trillion, including Nvidia , Apple , Microsoft , Alphabet , Amazon and Meta (though all but Meta are worth more than $2 trillion). Tesla’s market cap first crossed the $1 trillion mark in October 2021.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that a potential Trump administration could spell less regulation for Tesla and other companies.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players (BYD, Nio, etc.) from flooding the U.S. market over the coming years,” Ives wrote in a note to clients this week.
Trump has said previously he may cut the federal $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. Those credits have helped to drive sales of Tesla vehicles historically.
Tesla posted revenue of $25.18 billion and a net income of $2.17 billion in the third quarter of 2024. During the earnings call, Musk said his “best guess” was that “vehicle growth” would hit 20 or 30 percent in 2025. He pointed to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy” as driving forces behind his prediction. I guess we’ll see.
Tesla has been promising, and developing, driverless vehicle technology for more than a decade. Its key U.S. competitor, Alphabet-owned Waymo, has pulled ahead and is already operating commercial robotaxi services in several major cities.
On the third-quarter call, Musk said he would use his sway with a Trump-Vance administration to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level, which the CEO sees as a regulatory hurdle Tesla will need to overcome once it finally offers more than partially automated driving systems.
Whatever, man. They won. This shit sucks. Let them realize Elon is just making shit up on their own.
2nd Gear: Cost Cutting Coming To Lucid, Rivian
Both electric vehicle startups Lucid and Rivian make some really good cars, but they’ve got a little bit of a cash burn problem. Both lost money on every car they delivered in the third quarter, which isn’t great.
Rivian reported a $1.1 billion net loss in Q3 on $874 million in revenue after sales fell. Lucid’s sales actually improved in the quarter, but its net loss widened to $950 million on $200 million in revenue. From Automotive News:
The EV makers are expected to burn through billions of dollars as they develop more affordable midsize crossovers for 2026 that will lower the entry price into the brands from around $70,000 with shipping for current models to around $50,000 for the crossovers that are still about two years from production.
Analysts say Rivian and Lucid need to rein in costs if they are ever to become profitable. In addition, they warn that the reelection of former President Donald Trump on Nov. 5 could bring reduced support for electric-vehicle incentives that go to the automakers and to the consumers who buy their products.
“We anticipate that the transition to electric vehicles in the U.S. will be hindered under Trump’s administration,” GlobalData said in a Nov. 6 research note. Trump’s regulatory changes “could lead to a 15-20 percent decrease in the market share of battery electric vehicles in the U.S. by 2030 compared to our base forecast.”
Bank of America downgraded Rivian stock to a neutral rating from buy after the third-quarter earnings report, citing the potential loss of regulatory credits from EV sales under a Trump administration. EV makers can sell those credits to industry counterparts who don’t meet emissions standards.
“We are making real meaningful progress in terms of lowering our bill of materials, lowering our cost structure,” said Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe on the third-quarter earnings call Nov. 7. “In a similar fashion, we’re also driving efficiency into how we’re running the plant. So the hours per unit that we build is coming down.”
In a bit of good news, Rivian expects to achieve a gross profit in the fourth quarter of this year. That’ll partially come through the sale of regulatory credits for about $275 million, according to the company, but hey, every little bit helps.
In the third quarter, Rivian’s gross loss per vehicle delivered rose to $39,130 compared with $30,648 in the year-earlier period, it said. Those numbers will improve in the fourth quarter as a result of Rivian’s cost-cutting programs for its R1T pickup and R1S crossover, Scaringe said on the earnings call.
Rivian said it had cash and cash equivalents of $5.4 billion at the end of the quarter. It also has a $5 billion investment from Volkswagen Group as part of a joint venture that is expected to close before the end of the year, Scaringe said.
Third-quarter deliveries for the Irvine, Calif., automaker fell 36 percent to 10,018 vehicles, and output dropped 19 percent to 13,157, the company said. Rivian is suffering from a parts shortage that started in the third quarter that has limited electric-motor production, it said.
Lucid has its own world of issues to deal with as well.
Lucid reported a 91 percent increase in third-quarter sales to a record 2,781 for its sole model, the Air sedan. The Newark, Calif., automaker’s production increased 16 percent to 1,805 vehicles.
Similar to Rivian, Lucid is focused on cost cutting to improve its finances after raising $4 billion this year to support its loss-making operations. Those include the start of production of its first crossover, the Gravity, this year and the development of the midsize model that is scheduled for production in late 2026.
Lucid vastly expanded its Casa Grande, Ariz., factory this year for production of the Gravity and brought more of its manufacturing in-house to reduce costs, CEO Peter Rawlinson said on the Nov. 7 conference call.
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In its third-quarter earnings report, Lucid said cash and cash equivalents stood at $1.89 billion, compared with $1.35 billion in the preceding three-month period. In October, Lucid announced it was raising $1.75 billion more through a public offering and a private placement of shares.
Luckily for both nascent automakers, they both say they’ve got enough financing to fund projects into 2026. That’s a really good thing, because Lucid and Rivian make some of the most compelling products on the market right now.
3rd Gear: Jaguar EV Concept Coming Next Month
Jaguar is set to unveil a new concept vehicle in Miami on December 2 that’ll give a glimpse of the first new model under JLR’s strategy to reposition the British brand as a luxury EV maker.
It’s going to be shown the night before Miami’s Art Week kicks off. JLR says the first model to be launched on its new JEA Jaguar-specific electric platform will be a “four-door GT,” so I suppose we should look out of some sort of fast sedan. That’s good news, because Jaguar is very good at fast, good-looking sedans. The automaker also said it will be a “copy of nothing.” From Automotive News:
Jaguar will now launch the model in late summer 2026, CEO Adrian Mardell said on an earnings call on Nov. 8. Last year JLR said the Jaguar EV would be launched in 2025.
Mardell told journalists that the company was being cautious on timing as it monitored demand for electric cars. “BEV adoption is looking a little bit weaker and more inconsistent than would have been 12 months ago,” he said.
The U.S. and the U.K. will be key markets for the car, Mardell added. The U.K. is one of the best-performing global EV markets, with a share growing to 18 percent in the 10 months to the end of October.
Demand for electric cars in the U.S. has been thrown into uncertainty with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Trump has promised to roll back some EV incentive programs, although he counts Tesla CEO Elon Musk as an important ally.
JLR is monitoring the uptake of EVs as it plans the timing of the second and possible third models on the JEA platform as well as those cars on the company’s new Electrified Modular Architecture, or EMA, platform for smaller Range Rover models.
Whatever Jaguar is going to do in the future, it better be damn good. It’s one of those brands I’ve always loved, and it’s a goddamn shame to see it in the shape its in today.
4th Gear: Cadillac XT4 Production Ends In January
The gas-powered Cadillac XT4 has an official expiration date as GM says the compact crossover will end production in January of 2025 at the company’s Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas. It coincides with the end of the Chevy Malibu’s production at the same plant. Don’t fret, Fairfax enthusiasts. GM is investing $391 million at the plant to make the new version of the Chevy Bolt in late 2025. From the Detroit News:
“General Motors is confident in our strong ICE and EV portfolio and will lean into growth opportunities guided by customer demand,” GM spokesperson Kevin Kelly said in a statement. “There is no change to our previously announced $391 million investment and staffing plans at Fairfax Assembly. This facility will continue to play a critical role in GM’s future with the new Chevrolet Bolt EV. “
GM plans to bring a shift back to Fairfax in October 2025 ahead of the start of Bolt production, according to a plant memo sent to employees that was obtained by The Detroit News. The automaker is anticipating a return of the second production shift in the first quarter of 2026, according to that memo.
GM will be temporarily laying off 686 United Auto Workers-represented employees when Malibu production ends and about 759 more in January when the XT4 ends, according to the memo.
GM originally planned to end XT4 production in January and then resume it in mid-2025 but pulled back on those plans. Cadillac has three more EVs coming: the Escalade IQ, the Optiq SUV and the Vistiq three-row SUV. It already has Cadillac Lyriq SUV and the hand-built Celestiq, an ultra-luxury car.
“Cadillac will offer our most comprehensive portfolio ever in 2025 with twelve models and a mix of ICE and EVs,” Kelly said. “The current lineup meets the need of almost every luxury customer with an offering in most major segments. In just over a year, Cadillac has introduced six new products which will help us maintain our momentum.”
XT4 production started in the fall of 2018 for the 2019 model year. Through Q3 of 2024, Cadillac sold 15,688 of the little crossovers. That’s down 12 percent from last year. So long, little guy.