BusinessJan 14, 2025
After Tesla’s 2024 Sales Decline, Luxury EV Giants Lucid and Rivian Bank on SUVs To Take Them To New Heights
Market Rivalry
Noah Weidner
Discover
The winds might be turning against electric vehicles, but for these instant-torque machines, it’s business as usual — or rather, bitter competition as usual. Luxury EV staples Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid are speeding into 2025 with new production models — turning the EV market into a Battle of the EV SUVs.
No small fry: Tesla’s sales declined 1.1% in 2024, marking the company’s first decline in 12 years. All is not lost, but to avoid a repeat of that decline in 2025, the EV disruptor will have to fend off challenges from luxury EV-first names like Lucid and Rivian — which are beginning to offer products that threaten Tesla’s differentiated pricing, range, and technology offerings. To start the year, the first front in that defense is all about SUVs.
Those new challengers could create problems for Tesla — even without promising new entrants from legacy automakers like Volvo, Kia, and BMW. But Tesla is responding, banking on its mid-size Model Y SUV to win over international buyers and more cost-sensitive ones.
Bitter rivalry: Side-by-side, the Lucid Gravity and Rivian R1S are more similar to Tesla’s full-size Model X. However, with both companies rolling out cheaper base models, the Model Y will still have a handy advantage in the form of cost and range. Hopefully that’ll buy Tesla some time to get that cost down before Lucid launches “SUV War II” with a mid-size of its own in 2028.
