Rivian Loses Its Shine as Investors Fret About Production Delays

The electric vehicle maker’s stock surged after a public offering last fall but has since plunged, in part because the company failed to meet its 2021 goals.

Rivian, a maker of electric vehicles that aspires to compete with Tesla, completed an initial public offering last year that raised nearly $14 billion. Its shares quickly soared, and the company briefly had a stock market value that was nearly twice that of Ford Motor.

But three months after Rivian’s debut on the stock market, investors are worried that the company may not quite live up to its promise because it has had trouble increasing production of its pickup trucks, sport-utility vehicles and delivery vans. Though Rivian is still worth about $55 billion, its stock has fallen by nearly two-thirds from its peak and is well below its I.P.O. price.

Investors’ anxiety about Rivian’s prospects can be traced in part to its failure to meet a modest goal of producing 1,200 vehicles for individual buyers in 2021. The company also appears to be struggling to provide delivery vans to Amazon, one of its largest investors and its main customer for that vehicle. It hasn’t helped that Rivian’s chief operating officer left at the end of last year after less than two years on the job and the news came out in a press report, not a Rivian announcement.