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Canadian Electric Vehicle Maker Surges 220% – and the Rally Is Still Going

Canadian Electric Vehicle Maker Surges 220% – and the Rally Is Still Going

(Bloomberg) -- A tiny Canadian company with a mission to bring in the biggest disruption to the auto industry since Ford Motor Co’s Model T, has started grabbing investor attention.

Vancouver-based ElectraMeccanica Vehicles Co. is building a fully electric three-wheeler, meant for solo driving and aimed at commuters and for last-mile delivery runs. It might still be early to call the company a rival for Tesla Inc., and as Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kevin Tynan noted, it seems like a vehicle that one may need in addition to a regular, full-sized vehicle. Investors, however, are excited, sending the company’s shares up more than 220 percent on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported on the aptly named Solo vehicle, and adding another 54 percent on Thursday.

Canadian Electric Vehicle Maker Surges 220% – and the Rally Is Still Going

Despite the rally, shares of the company are still down more than 30 percent from where they were a year ago.

While the steady advent of electric cars poses an existential threat to the traditional ways of the automotive business, it is also creating niches for unusual options. “The lowest cost electric vehicle you can get, it is a great second vehicle,” Chief Executive Jerry Kroll said during a business update call on Wednesday.

ElectraMeccanica is aiming to ramp up the sales of its Solo at a time when the U.S. auto market has started leaning heavily towards sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, as consumer preferences shifted away from passenger cars. The changing tastes have also pushed carmakers to focus on building bigger electric vehicles, with Morgan Stanley calling e-pickups the next frontier in the still nascent electric vehicle industry.

To contact the reporter on this story: Esha Dey in New York at edey@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Courtney Dentch at cdentch1@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.