What You Missed This Week in EVs and Clean Energy

Institutional investors and professional traders rely on The Fly to keep up-to-the-second on breaking news in the electric vehicle and clean energy space, as well as which stocks in these sectors that the best analysts on Wall Street are saying to buy and sell.

From the hotly-debated high-flier Tesla (TSLA), Wall Street’s newest darling Rivian (RIVN), traditional-stalwarts turned EV-upstarts GM (GM) and Ford (F) to the numerous SPAC-deal makers that have come public in this red-hot space, The Fly has you covered with “Charged,” a weekly recap of the top stories and expert calls in the sector.

MODEL Y INVENTORY PRICE CUTS: According to its inventory webpage, Tesla has lowered the price of its Model Y vehicles. The Model Y Long Range Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive now lists at $47,030, down from $48,990, according to the site.

Click here to check out Tesla’s recent Media Buzz Sentiment as measured by TipRanks.

CYBERTRUCKS: Tesla is planning to deliver only 10 Cybertrucks at its delivery event later this month, Business Insiders’ Grace Key reports, citing remarks made by global director of product design Javier Verdura. CEO Elon Musk has previously said it will take time to scale production of the vehicle, which has received over 2M preorders.

CONSUMER DEMAND “A CHALLENGE”: Needham downgraded Lucid Group (LCID) to Hold from Buy. Despite being bullish on the potential for LCID’s recently unveiled Gravity SUV, the firm is lacking “enough faith” in near-term demand to drive unit volumes. Needham further notes that it is struggling to make a compelling case for Lucid to monetize their industry leading EV efficiency technology to a mass market OEM based on its “attempt at the math” around the Aston Martin deal. While Lucid is working to develop lower priced/lower performance technology, and the firm is optimistic it will succeed given its market leadership from an EV efficiency standpoint, Needham also sees a low likelihood of a more mass market/higher absolute dollar value licensing announcement in the near-term.

WORKFORCE CUTS: Lion Electric (LEV) announced a workforce reduction aimed at rationalizing its cost structure and improving its ability to reach its profitability objectives. The reduction affects 150 employees, or approximately 10% of Lion’s total headcount, in production overhead, manufacturing, product development and administrative functions, both in Canada and the United States. “Although this was a very difficult decision and we are sad to part ways with valued employees, this initiative was the right thing to do for the business at this point in time,” said Marc Bedard, CEO-Founder of Lion. “I am confident that the workforce remaining in place is more than capable to continue growing Lion’s leadership,” he added.

CRUISE SCALING BACK: The driverless car unit of General Motors dubbed Cruise, will be scaling back certain plans amid recent safety issues, according to a story written by Mike Colias and Meghan Bobrowsky for the Wall Street Journal. Robotaxi service, which originally beta tested in “several cities including San Francisco, Phoenix, Houston and Miami,” will be scaled back to one as of yet unnamed city, and plans for the Origin, a GM-built driverless taxi are cancelled, added the story. The revamped plans for the Cruise follow “an incident in which a self-driving Cruise vehicle hit a pedestrian and dragged her nearly 20 feet,” added the WSJ. The Fly notes that Waymo owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet (GOOG,GOOGL) and Tesla is also in the driverless vehicle space.