When government leaders and virtue-signaling billionaires make poor decisions, they never seem to suffer consequences. Only the victims of their arrogance and greed have to pay the price.
In a news release Wednesday, the Amazon-backed electric-vehicle manufacturer Rivian announced poor fourth-quarter 2023 financial results and dismal 2024 expectations, which led to a 17 percent decline in its stock price, according to CNBC.
Buried at the bottom of the news release’s fourth paragraph came the announcement that the company would be “reducing its salaried workforce by approximately 10%.”
In its press release, Rivian also announced that it “expects to produce 57,000 vehicles in 2024, in line with 2023 production.” But this number came in “well below” analysts’ production estimates, according to CNBC.
Without saying so directly, Rivian attributed its pessimism to Bidenomics.
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“Economic and geopolitical uncertainties and pressures, most notably the impact of historically high interest rates, have informed Rivian’s expectations for 2024,” the company announced.
On Thursday morning, CNBC identified Rivian among the 13 biggest-moving stocks from the previous day’s trading. That same report also listed the luxury EV manufacturer Lucid among its biggest losers.
Indeed, the broader economic picture — those “uncertainties and pressures” noted in the news release — does not favor the EV industry.
The Biden administration, for instance, reportedly intends to slow the pace of the auto industry’s ongoing transition to electric vehicles. According to another recent report, that transition has cost the Ford Motor Company dearly, with the recent announcement that, despite a projected adjusted operating profit of $11 billion in 2024, they expect to lose $5 billion to $5.5 billion on EVs this year.
Will electric vehicles ever become more common than gas vehicles?
Meanwhile, due to performance and price concerns, EVs simply have not generated much demand in middle America.
Amid all this bad news, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe pledged to forge ahead with his company’s perceived mission.
“We made great progress in 2023 despite economic headwinds, and we’re excited about the year ahead. We firmly believe in the full electrification of the automotive industry, but recognize in the short-term, the challenging macro-economic conditions,” Scaringe said in the press release.
Thanks to massive support from Amazon, Rivian may continue “burning through cash,” according to CNBC.
In fact, starting in 2019, Amazon maintained an exclusive partnership with Rivian “to bring 100,000 electric delivery vehicles on the road by 2030” as part of the delivery giant’s obnoxious Climate Pledge.
According to the AP, that exclusivity ended in November 2023, when Rivian announced that it would sell its electric delivery vans to companies other than Amazon.
Nonetheless, the partnership remained, for at that time Amazon still owned a 17 percent stake in the EV company.
This seems like a good place to mention that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos currently ranks as the world’s third-richest man.
In fact, according to Forbes’ “real-time billionaires” update, Bezos’ net worth increased by $3.7 billion Wednesday. That net worth stood at an estimated $193.5 billion as of Thursday.
Bezos also owns a $65 million Gulfstream G-650ER private jet, which Business Insider described as “just one of a fleet.”
The Amazon founder also has a car collection estimated at $20 million in value.
Clearly, Bezos has a commitment to reducing carbon emissions … by you.
Alas, his private jet is only an “eight-seater.” And that might not be enough to fly all of Rivian’s laid-off employees to their next job interviews.
