Tesla just made its biggest bet on electric carmaker

Rivian, an American automaker who has a focus on electric pickup trucks, sports utility vehicles and vans, announced Tuesday that it had raised $11.9 billion in its Wall Street debut.

If stock options and other convertible shares are not taken into account, this represents a valuation of $67.9 billion.

The company proposed a range of between $57 and $62 per share that was well above what it expected in November.

Although the start-up has just taken its first vehicles off the assembly line, it is worth almost as much as Ford, which has a valuation of $80 billion and close to the $85 billion valuation of General Motors, guaranteeing it a splashy entry on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol RIVN.

It announced its plan to go public in August and delivered its first pickup, the R 1 T, in September, with plans to debut its R 1 S SUV in December.

As of late October, it had an order backlog of 55400 R 1 Ts and R 1 Ss that it expects to deliver by the end of 2023. The price for electric trucks and sports utility vehicles starts from around $70,000.

Rivian plans to deliver 100,000 vans to Amazon by 2030. The e-commerce giant has a stake of $3.8 billion in Rivian's preferable stock.

The company is taking advantage of investor enthusiasm for the electric vehicle sector, where star performerTesla surpassed $1 trillion market capitalization.

Rivian was founded by Robert Scaringe, a car enthusiast who wanted to focus on less polluting forms of transportation rather than the traditional automobile.

He moved towards larger vehicles in 2012 after initially considering developing a sports car.

The company's backers often view it as the new Tesla, but Edmunds executive director of insights Jessica Caldwell said the comparison is not always warranted.

While Tesla released its first car when no one else cared about electric vehicles, Rivian is coming out in a market that is more saturated, Caldwell said.

She said they're not going to catch anyone by surprise.

Ford announced a $30 billion investment in electric vehicle production in a bid to position itself as a leader in the United States' shift away from climate-damaging fossil fuels

The company plans to build four new plants to produce electric vehicles and batteries, that will create 11,000 new jobs by 2025, and Caldwell said it will debut a new, cheaper electric pickup model, the F 150 Lightning.

There are businesses like Faraday and Fisker that are developing their own electric SUVs.

But considering the soaring success that is the Elon Musk-helmed Tesla, Caldwell conceded that traders can justify their enthusiasm for the latest electric vehicle maker on Wall Street.

She said that investors want to be a part of the next company that could show as much value as Tesla, and some people think that Rivian is that company.