26 As California Transitions to Electric Vehicles, Franchise Laws Are More Important Than Ever In November 2021, electric vehicle mania was in full swing on Wall Street. Rivian’s stock price hit over $170 per share, resulting in a market cap well over $100 billion. This young electric vehicle automaker was worth close to the combined value of Ford and GM, despite having delivered only a few hundred vehicles. Lucid, another EV automaker with only a few hundred vehicles delivered, was not far behind with a market cap of nearly $100 billion. And Tesla hit a stock price of over $1,200 per share, making it a $1 trillion company and Elon Musk the richest man in the world. 2022 has not been as kind to shareholders of any of these companies. As of March 18, 2022, stock prices are down by roughly 30% for Tesla and over 60% for Lucid and Rivian. Still, by any objective measure, valuations of EV automakers remain stratospheric. If I were CEO of a traditional automaker, I would view the valuations of these EV upstarts with a mixture of dismay and envy. I would also be thinking about ways to capture some of that EV magic to juice my company’s stock price. With this in mind, I was not shocked when Ford announced it would be launching a separate business for electric vehicles. The announcement seems to have had its intended impact – Ford’s stock price immediately jumped over 8%. For dealers, what comes next is critical. Will Ford use this transition as an opportunity to empower and train dealers By Anthony Bento, Director of Legal & Regulatory Affairs
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