- Solid-state polymer batteries are being tested for Mullen ONE cargo van.
- Mullen is now one month out from a shareholder meeting on December 15.
- MULN shareholders will vote on a reverse split to comply with NASDAQ listing requirements.
- MULN stock has lost 30% of its value in the past five sessions.
Mullen Automotive (MULN) stock has embarrassed its shareholders once again. As the NASDAQ Composite has soared more than 2% on the back of a lower inflation reading that has stock market investors calling an end to interest rate hikes, MULN crashed more than 6% on Tuesday.
More specifically, the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed no headline inflation between September and October, owing largely to falling gasoline prices. Even when energy and food were stripped out though, US inflationary pressure was largely absent. This gave Wall Street the notion that the Federal Reserve may begin cutting interest rates sooner than expected, and the stock market surged in response.
Mullen stock news: Testing out solid-state batteries
Mullen’s share price can’t seem to catch a break. MULN stock looks prepared to mark its sixth-straight daily loss on Tuesday despite broad market excitement.
Even though Mullen’s news drops are exciting these days, they are largely ignored by the market. The electric vehicle (EV) company said on Monday that it has begun “calibrating” new solid-state polymer (SSP) batteries at its new “high-energy” facility in Fullerton, California. These SSPs should eventually provide the Mullen One delivery van with a longer battery range and thus draw in a greater swath of corporate customers.
For instance, Mullen says initial testing shows the Mullen One cargo van has about 110 miles of range with its existing lithium ferrophosphate (LFP) battery. The new SSP battery packs should give the same vehicle about 190 miles of range. Furthermore, this 73% increase in range would make the Mullen One the industry leader among US Class 1 commercial vehicles.
The Fullerton facility also has production capabilities, and Mullen hopes to one day produce as much as 1 GWh per year worth of battery packs at the plant. For now, the company will focus on calibrating the new battery pack design in December and then begin test driving it in the first quarter of next year.
EV stocks FAQs
Electric vehicles or EVs are automobiles that use rechargable batteries and electric motors to accelerate rather than internal combustion engines (ICEs). They have been around for more that 100 years, but battery technology research & development was meager for much of the 20th century. Lithium-ion battery technology became advanced enough to produce EVs at scale in the late 1990s and 2000s, and sales have been steadily increasing since then Tesla’s Roadster was unveiled in 2008. EVs are viewed as a means of reducing carbon emissions since battery electric vehicles (BEVs) themselves produce zero emissions. Other vehicles called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) utilize both battery electric power and ICEs as a backup.
EVs are growing from a small base, but they rose from 9% of global new auto sales in 2021 to 14% of the total in 2022. This was a 65% YoY growth rate, and the industry delivered 10.2 million EVs worldwide in 2022. Projections show this number climbing above 16 million in 2023. Across the world, market shares differ greatly among nations. Nearly 88% of Norwegian new car sales in 2022 were EVs. On the other hand, the United States, where much of the modern innovation in EVs was forged, had less than 8% of new vehicle sales go to EVs in 2022. The largest EV market in the world, China, saw 30% of the market go to EVs that year.
We know you’re thinking Elon Musk, but he’s probably more like the father of the mass-market, contemporary EV. All the way back in 1827, a Hungarian priest named Anyos Jedlik invented the electric motor and used it the following year to power a vehicle of sorts. French scientist Gaston Planté invented the lead-acid battery in 1859, and German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first true electric car for the public in 1888. EVs made up about 38% of all vehicles sold in the US around 1900. They began losing market share rapidly after 1910 when gasoline-powered vehicles grew much more affordable. They largely died off until new research programs in the 1990s led to gradual private sector investment in the 2000s.
China’s BYD is by far the largest manufacturer of EVs in the world. In 2022 it sold 1.8 million EVs and in the second half of the year made up 20% of the global market. The asterisk given to BYD is that the vast majority of these vehicles are hybrids. Tesla’s 12% market share is often treated as more significant than BYD, because it only sells BEVs and is the most famous EV brand in the world. Volkswagen, BMW and Wuling then round out the top five. As a new sector with heavy investment though, many startups have flooded the market. These include China’s Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng; a Swedish-Chinese manufacturer called Polestar; and Lucid and Rivian from the US.
Mullen stock forecast
With MULN stock breaking below support at $0.2210 last Friday and $0.18 on Tuesday, there seems to be no end to the madness for shareholders. In the two years since I began covering Mullen, the stock has typically only gone in one direction – down.
Current shareholders are now focused on December 15. That is when Mullen CEO David Michery will try to get his third reverse stock split of the year past shareholders via vote. The board has approved a reverse split of between a 1-for-2 and 1-for-100 ratio with the idea that this will artificially raise the share price above $1, which is required to remain listed on the NASDAQ exchange.
The 2023 reverse split saga has definitely sent many traders toward the exit, and that is why the Mullen stock price continues to make its way lower.
MULN daily chart
