EV and auto stocks compared: Tesla, Ford, GM, Rivian and Lucid

Carmaking is one of the hardest ways to make money in public markets: enormous factories, thin margins, fierce price competition and a product cycle measured in years. The shift to electric vehicles has made it harder still, because every company is paying for two technologies at once. The five companies in this study span the whole range — a highly valued electric-vehicle leader, two century-old manufacturers, and two start-ups still trying to reach profitability. Their filings tell a story the share prices only partly reflect. Figures are trailing twelve months to each company's latest filing; valuations are at the 14 October 2026 close.

The five side by side

Two industries in one table

The most striking column is price-to-sales. Ford and General Motors together sell far more cars than Tesla — revenue of $189.86bn and $186.95bn against Tesla's $103.57bn — yet the market values each of them at well under half a dollar per dollar of sales, while Tesla trades at 14.01 times. Tesla's P/E is 403.47; GM's is 18.17, and Ford has none because it lost money.

No difference in today's car business explains that gap. Tesla's operating margin of 3.35% is higher than GM's 2.32% and Ford's −3.77%, but it is not the margin of a technology company. Its revenue grew 5.19% a year over three years, and its earnings per share fell 33.18% a year over the same period, as price cuts and investment compressed profits. The valuation rests on expectations about businesses beyond today's car sales — energy storage, software, autonomy — that are small or absent in the current accounts. Our P/E guide works through what a 403-times multiple implies.

Ford and GM: the cash yields that need a footnote

On free cash flow yield, Ford (19.46%) and General Motors (20.55%) look like the cheapest large companies we cover. Treat that with caution. Both consolidate finance arms that lend to car buyers and dealers, and the cash flows of a lending business behave like a bank's. The companies' own measures of automotive free cash flow, which strip out their finance arms, are narrower. Our consolidated figure cannot separate the two, which is also why we show no net-debt figure for either company: their finance arms' borrowings sit under accounting labels our reader does not attribute to total debt. See balance-sheet risk for why we prefer a blank to a misleading number.

Ford's loss over the period came largely from charges taken on its electric-vehicle business; its free cash flow of $9.55bn stayed positive. General Motors' net margin of 2.12% was similarly squeezed. Both still return cash: Ford's dividend yields 4.98%, and GM bought back shares worth 11.14% of its market value over the year. In Ford vs GM our scores give GM the edge, 4 to 2.

Rivian and Lucid: the cost of getting to scale

The start-ups face a different question: not how profitable they are, but how long they can keep going. Both grew revenue quickly from small bases — Rivian 48.11% a year and Lucid 30.57% — and both lose money at the operating level and below.

Rivian reported an operating margin of −60.05% and free cash flow of −$3.49bn, against $3.59bn of cash and cash equivalents. That cash figure understates its total liquidity, because like many companies it also holds short-term investments, which our figure excludes. Even so, a business burning that much cash depends on its losses narrowing and on continued access to capital from investors and partners. Its gross margin of 7.51% is the number to watch: it shows whether each vehicle now sells for more than it costs to build.

Lucid is in a more difficult position. Its gross margin of −96.56% means it spent almost two dollars building and delivering each dollar of cars sold, before any research or overheads. Its free cash flow of −$5.11bn was close to four times its market value of $1.3bn, and its shareholders' equity had turned negative, at −$1.06bn. Lucid has relied heavily on its largest shareholder, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and on capital markets for funding.

Our six-factor score cannot separate these two: Rivian vs Lucid is a 3–3 draw, because with losses everywhere almost every factor lacks the inputs to call. That is the honest answer — the comparison that matters here is cash runway, which the score does not measure.

What the scores say, and what they cannot

Our rules favour the companies that are cheap on today's numbers and return cash. General Motors beats Tesla 4.5 to 1.5 in Tesla vs GM, and Ford also beats Tesla in Tesla vs Ford, while Tesla vs Rivian is a draw. Those results are correct about the past twelve months and say nothing about whether Tesla's expected future businesses will materialise — which is the only question its share price is really asking. This is the clearest example on the site of the score's limits, set out in the six-factor score explained.

Five numbers to watch in any carmaker's filings

1. Gross margin — whether vehicles sell for more than they cost to build, and whether that gap is widening.
2. Capital spending — new models and battery plants consume cash for years before they earn anything.
3. Cash and short-term investments against cash burn — for loss-makers, the runway in quarters.
4. Automotive versus finance-arm results — reported separately in the segment note of Ford's and GM's filings.
5. Pricing — average selling prices and incentives, discussed in management's commentary, show whether margins are being bought with discounts.

How to read a 10-K explains where each of these sits in the annual report. For how carmakers' margins compare with other industries, see operating margin by business model.