Lucid Motors and Rivian both staged their most significant product events in years on Thursday — unveiling cheaper vehicles, new robotaxi deals, and paths to profitability — only to see their shares fall nearly 7% each as a broader market selloff driven by surging oil prices overwhelmed the news.
As of press time, Lucid shares were falling 6.7% to $9.97 on volume while Rivian dropped 7.2% to $15.48.
Both stocks declined in line with or worse than the major indices, which came under heavy pressure as crude oil prices surged toward $100 per barrel hours after Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said the Strait of Hormuz should remain closed.
The declines extend diverging trajectories for the two companies.
Lucid shares have fallen 22.5% over the past three months and are down 51% over the past year.
Rivian has fared better in the near term — off 5.5% over three months — and has gained 46.5% over the past year on the back of the R2 anticipation and its Volkswagen partnership.
Both went public in 2021 and reached their all-time highs shortly after their IPOs — levels neither stock has revisited in the five years since.
Lucid peaked at $57.75 in November 2021; Rivian hit $179.47 that same month. At Thursday’s prices, Lucid traded 83% below its peak and Rivian 91% below.
As of publication time, the S&P 500 was falling 1.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down roughly 650 points, or 1.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite shed 1.5%.
Lucid: Four Hours of Firsts
Lucid held its first-ever investor day across a four-hour programme in New York, delivering a string of disclosures, including a new robotaxi deal with Uber — which could send the total purchase agreement to about 40,000 units.
Andrew Macdonald, Uber‘s president and chief operating officer, said on stage that the ride-hailing giant is finalising an agreement to deploy Lucid’s upcoming midsize platform as a robotaxi at volumes comparable to the 20,000 Gravity SUVs already under contract.
Lucid also named its first two midsize models — Cosmos and Earth — and revealed a two-seat dedicated robotaxi concept called Lunar that it claims would cut fleet operating costs by 40% compared with current robotaxis.
CFO Taoufiq Boussaid outlined a roadmap to 100,000 units of annual production by 2028 and positive free cash flow by the end of the decade.
The company also entered the ADAS subscription race, announcing tiers from $69 to $199 per month starting in 2027.
An auto reviewer who became the first person outside Lucid to sit inside the Cosmos described it as a ‘younger, more modern’ Gravity and said it should start under $50,000 — a price point that would place it directly against the Tesla Model Y and Rivian R2.
Rivian R2 Goes Official
Hours later and 1,700 miles away in Austin, Rivian officially launched the R2 at SXSW — confirming specifications that had been accidentally leaked by Ars Technica one day earlier.
The R2 Performance starts at $57,990 with a limited-time Launch Package that includes lifetime access to Autonomy+, Rivian’s most advanced driver-assistance suite.
The dual-motor all-wheel-drive SUV produces 656 horsepower and offers an EPA-estimated range of 330 miles.
A Premium variant at $53,990 is expected in late 2026, with the $45,000 Standard not arriving until late 2027 — roughly 18 months after the first deliveries.
But the event was shadowed by a disclosure that raised questions about Rivian‘s near-term execution.
The company did not open the R2 online configurator on Thursday — instead telling customers it would launch ‘in the coming months.’
Rivian simultaneously began contacting reservation holders to confirm their pre-orders, revealing in customer emails that they would see their ‘estimated time to order’ only in June.
The timeline is significant because it appears to narrow — if not close — the window for meaningful first-half deliveries.
Earlier this year, Rivian had told local media outlet WGLT during a factory tour in Normal, Illinois that customer deliveries of the R2 were planned “by June.”
If orders are only being placed in June, production of customer-spec vehicles cannot begin until then at the earliest, pushing initial deliveries toward the summer or later.
Rivian‘s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said on Thursday that deliveries will being “later this Spring.”
Benchmark analyst Mickey Legg called the event an ‘important demand signal’ earlier in the day.
The Bigger Picture
Both companies are betting that lower-priced vehicles will sharply expand their addressable markets.
Lucid currently sells only the Air sedan (from ~$70,000) and Gravity SUV (from $79,900).
The Cosmos at under $50,000 in late 2026 would be its cheapest product ever. However, as seen with Rivian, the EV maker is not expected to begin deliveries with the entry-level trim.
Rivian’s lineup starts at $70,990 for the R1T; the R2 at $45,000 — when it arrives in late 2027 — would cut that entry point by more than a third.
Neither company is profitable.
Lucid delivered 15,841 vehicles in 2025 and posted a full-year net loss of $2.70 billion. Rivian delivered 42,247 vehicles and leads in cumulative losses with more than $24 billion since its inception.
Both are headquartered in California: Lucid in Newark and Rivian in Irvine.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund holds a majority stake in Lucid, while Amazon and Volkswagen are Rivian‘s largest shareholders.
