Hot or Not: Tariff Terror? Just a Little.

CFO Razvan Radulescu echoed that sentiment, saying that the cost to build electric buses had gone up more than 10%, causing leaders to “prioritize” ICE buses, “until the tariff situation comes to a resolution.”

That doesn’t mean they plan to stop building them for the rest of the year, of course. Blue Bird’s full year guidance is 800 – 1,000 electric bus sales. Combined, the company already has 1,100 electric buses either booked or in their order backlog, so it’s a safe goal.

After a bumpy 2024 that managed to end on a high note, Rivian Automotive is determined to continue the win streak. The electric truck maker posted its second consecutive quarter of positive gross profit, coming in at $206 million. Aside from being an achievement on its own, hitting that goal also unlocked $1 billion in funding from its joint venture partner, Volkswagen Group. However, CFO Claire McDonough warned that gross profit levels could “vary” in the coming quarters due to impacts from tariff policies.

On the vehicle side, Rivian produced 14,611 vehicles and delivered 8,640, with deliveries being roughly 37% lower compared to Q1 2024. Development on its upcoming R2 platform is still in progress as well, although there’s a production start date projected in the first half of 2026. CEO RJ Scaringe affirmed that the starting price would be $45,000, making R2 Rivian’s cheapest offering to date, as well as what executives see as a quicker path to becoming profitable.

“As we look forward to launching R2, we expect a faster path to profitability as compared to R1, and we also expect that the volumes of R2 in our Normal (Illinois) facility will help lower the total fixed costs per unit across all vehicles coming out of the Normal plant,” Scaringe said.

Despite the encouraging numbers, executives don’t expect the rest of the year to be smooth sailing. The company revised its 2025 delivery outlook to 40,000 – 46,000 vehicles, down from the March projection of 46,000 – 51,000 vehicles. According to McDonough, the reduction is due to “evolving trade regulations, policies, tariffs and the overall impact these items may have on consumer sentiment and demand.”

While Rivian is already pulling back on production guidelines, it doesn’t mean the automaker is in trouble. Its $5 billion deal with Volkswagen, other upcoming partnerships, and new, cheaper offerings make it seem like the company is truly finding its groove.

Lucid Group bet on a bigger platform, and it’s paying off. According to Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff, the luxury car maker’s new Gravity SUV has not only brought scores of new customers but also helped Lucid reach a new delivery record of 3,109 vehciles in the first quarter, a 58% increase year over year.

Production numbers are also up compared to Q1 2024 with 2,212 vehicles, although down sequentially from nearly 3,400 at the end of 2024. However, Winterhoff and his team need to put out more than twice what they did this quarter in order to meet their 20,000 vehicle production goal, twice what they aimed for in 2024.

But beyond making more cars, Lucid has been making great strides to entrench itself as a stable luxury EV option. In Q1, Lucid’s $366 million net loss was almost half that of Q1 2024, while revenue jumped 36% to $235 million in the same period.

The company’s domestic manufacturing footprint also grew substantially during Q1 by purchasing bankrupt hydrogen truck maker Nikola’s Coolidge, Arizona, manufacturing plant and Phoenix facility, located roughly an hour away from Lucid’s own Casa Grande plant. Winterhoff called the purchase a “great deal,” as allowed Lucid to take on some former Nikola employees and save money.

“So far, we welcomed more than 250 former Nikola employees with strong backgrounds in EV technology, which will support our growth plans […] We paid approximately $17 million in cash […] truly a great deal that allows us to gain assets that would have otherwise been significantly more costly by a huge factor,” he said.

The move is also conveniently timed as the possibility of tariffs remains. Winterhoff has previously said that most of Lucid’s production takes place in Arizona already, but he added on the May 6 earnings call that executives are “proactively” working towards localizing more of the supply.

Overall, Lucid has hit the ground running for 2025 with big plans and, so far, the means to back them up. We’ll see where they land in the next one.

Normally, Polestar Automotive Holdings’ CFO Jean-Francois Mady saying that the company’s $100 million - $120 million monthly cash burn is unsustainable and that its $4.8 billion in debt is “not satisfying” and will require alternative financing, should mean it gets a decidedly “NOT” designation. But there’s more to this story.

Polestar released “select” financial results on May 12 that were…mixed. Net loss dropped by $86 million, while revenue was up 84% to $608 million for the quarter. Mady attributed the jump in revenue to the launch of Polestar 3 and 4, giving the company a three-vehicle lineup as opposed to the single offering of Polestar 2. Retail sales also shot up 76% to just over 12,300 cars for the quarter.

While those numbers are good, they’re “select” ones. Polestar’s larger financial situation is still a bit of a mystery, and they haven’t offered much guidance about 2025 projections, aside from CEO Michael Lohscheller commenting that the company is in “execution mode” and has plans to decrease cash burn.

“We have a plan starting with, I will say growing our top line, improving our profitability, reducing cost and expenses, and improving our working cap and starting to look for efficiencies in terms of capex spending,” he said.

It’s not a lot to go on, but we’ll hopefully see how it shakes out soon.

In January, electric van manufacturer Canoo filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations immediately. The start-up tried to save itself through attempts to secure financial support with the Department of Energy and other “foreign” sources of capital. However, the efforts were unsuccessful, and the company came to an end with less than $100,000 in cash and millions in debt.

Soon afterwards, hydrogen truck maker Nikola Corp. followed suit. News about the beleaguered company had been scant for months, until fellow EV maker Mullen Automotive announced it had purchased battery assets from Nikola at the end of January. Roughly two weeks later, Nikola filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Unlike Canoo, Nikola continued to provide some services through the end of March.