Volkswagen faces Rivian acquisition calls

Some institutional investors at German OEM Volkswagen’s late June capital markets day were unconvinced about the firm’s strategy to penetrate the US electric SUV and truck segment through its revival of the Scout brand, given a previous patchy track record in the ICE portion of these markets, according to EV inFocus sources. And these sceptics were asking senior executives why, rather than pursuing organic growth, the firm did not instead tilt at buying US EV pure play Rivian.

There is a slew of other potential acquisition targets among Rivian’s peers struggling to finance the tough journey from start-up to scale, not least Ohio-based Lordstown Motors, which has entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and explicitly put its Endurance electric pick-up product up for sale. But analysts do not expect a queue of deep-pocketed legacy OEMs to form to snap up all of the firms that have been — not entirely seriously — grouped together as ‘the Tesla killers’.