TESLA IS ALL-IN ON AUTONOMOUS DRIVING AND AI. IS RIVIAN POISED TO COMPETE?
RivianRIVN holds its "Autonomy & AI Day" on Thursday at 12 p.m. ET. with the EV startup looking to highlight its work on autonomous driving as TeslaTSLA and CEO Elon Musk have made it clear the future of vehicles is all about self-driving vehicle technology and artificial intelligence.
While the format and the exact details of the event are still unknown, CEO RJ Scaringe said during the Q3 earnings call on Nov. 4 that Rivian will discuss and share information about its autonomous platform along with the "hardware and software roadmap" during the Dec. 11 event.
"Over the long term, we expect the industry to be fully electric, autonomous and software defined," Scaringe told analysts last month. "We believe what will differentiate Rivian's autonomous capabilities will be our end-to-end AI-centric approach."
Scaringe added that Rivian hopes to grow its fleet of customer vehicles and continue to "collect real-world driving data."
"That data can be used to train our large driving model, which we believe will allow a rapid rollout of updating driving inference models with growing capabilities," he said.
The IBD Methodology
In the third quarter, Rivian saw an increase in quarter over quarter operating expenses, driven primarily by research and development investments as it prepares to launch its upcoming R2 and "training costs" for the EV start-up's autonomy platform.
On the Q3 call, Scaringe also said that "a lot of emphasis has gone on the robotaxi side" across the industry, with Tesla, AlphabetGOOGL-owned Waymo and Amazon.comAMZN-owned Zoox all ramping up activity.
Discussing whether Rivian will enter the robotaxi market, Scaringe said the "opportunity for us to participate in robotaxis, it's of course there."
"It's something that if we chose to partner with some of the big rideshare operators, there's lots of market opportunities there. But our focus today is really on the technology," Scaringe said.
Rivian Stock Performance
Rivian stock advanced 3% to 18.27 in Wednesday's stock market, part of a 7% gain so far in December.
Since hitting a recent intraday low of 13.95 on Nov. 21, RIVN shares have surged more than 29%, booking nine consecutive daily advances before breaking that streak on Friday.
On Friday, Rivian stock hit a high of 18.60, notching its highest level since July 2024.
On Sunday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco assumed coverage of Rivian stock with an underweight rating and price target of 12, representing around 30% downside.
"Rivian faces outsized risk heading into 2026 as it launchesits lower-priced R2 into a challenging EV market, where slowing adoption, loss of the$7,500 tax credit, and persistent consumer concerns (range anxiety, charginginfrastructure, residual values, battery tech, affordability) create headwinds that a mass-market vehicle may struggle to overcome in the near-term," Percoco wrote Sunday.
"Rivian's strong design andperformance help, but Tesla's rapidly advancing FSD will require greater conviction inRivian's AV (autonomous vehicle) capabilities," the analyst noted, adding that he expects more details on the Dec. 11 AI day.
What Nvidia Earnings Mean For Tesla As 2026 Could Be The Year Of The Robotaxi Wars
Meanwhile, Tesla stock advanced on Wednesday after bouncing off its 50-day moving average during Tuesday's stock market.
Last week, Tesla stock jumped 5.8% to 455, making a strong move above the 50-day line.
Investors can also keep tabs on the Leaderboard, the IBD 50 list of top growth stocks and IBD SwingTrader along with the IBD Sector Leaders list.
Rivian stock has an 80 Composite Rating out of a best-possible 99. The stock also has an 89 Relative Strength Rating and a 36 EPS Rating.
Please follow Kit Norton on X @KitNorton for more coverage.
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2025-12-09T14:16:27Z