8 Fastest-Growing Auto Stocks to Invest in Now

Microvast Holdings is a global developer and manufacturer of advanced battery technologies with a dual focus: next-generation batteries for commercial and passenger electric vehicles, and utility-scale energy storage systems. The company operates across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, and the United States, giving it exposure to multiple high-growth geographies simultaneously.

The financial trajectory is compelling. In Q3 2024, Microvast reported record revenue of $101.4 million - a 27% year-over-year increase - with the EMEA region delivering a staggering 212% revenue surge as European fleet electrification accelerated. More significantly, the company dramatically improved its gross margin from 22.3% to 33.2% year-over-year, demonstrating that the revenue growth is not being purchased through margin erosion. This is the kind of simultaneous top-line expansion and margin improvement that signals an improving business model at scale.

Luminar Technologies occupies one of the most strategically critical positions in the autonomous vehicle technology stack. The company designs and manufactures Iris LiDAR sensors - the long-range perception hardware that allows vehicles to build three-dimensional maps of their surroundings in real time - and the software platforms required to translate raw sensor data into actionable driving decisions. Luminar's key differentiator is that it has pursued integration with original equipment manufacturers at the OEM level, embedding its technology into production vehicles rather than aftermarket fitment.

In Q3 2024, Luminar confirmed a significant OEM win: its Iris LiDAR sensor has been selected as standard equipment on a further Volvo model, expanding the existing Volvo partnership into a broader deployment. Simultaneously, the company signed a development contract with a major Japanese OEM for next-generation ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems), covering paid development work across hardware, software, and vehicle integration. These are meaningful validation events in an industry where OEM adoption is the primary barrier to scale. On the financial side, Luminar achieved approximately $20 million in GAAP operating cash flow improvement quarter-over-quarter through cost discipline - a critical indicator for a pre-profitability company that must demonstrate it can reach self-sustaining scale before its cash runway runs out.

XPeng is one of China's leading smart EV manufacturers and the company with the most explicit positioning as an AI-defined automotive company. Its vehicle lineup - including the MONA M03 sedan, the P7+ sports sedan, and the X9 MPV - is built around XPeng's proprietary XNGP autonomous driving system, which by mid-2025 achieved road coverage across all Chinese cities including areas without high-definition maps. This full-city capability, at a 70%+ user penetration rate, meaningfully exceeds industry averages and represents genuine competitive differentiation rather than marketing positioning.

XPeng delivered 190,068 vehicles in 2024, reflecting a 34% year-over-year increase, and Q3 2024 alone saw 46,533 deliveries - a 54% sequential quarterly jump and a 16% year-over-year gain that surpassed the company's own guidance. The MONA M03's launch was a critical moment: an entry-level, tech-forward vehicle that attracted customers who were not previously in XPeng's target segment, dramatically expanding the addressable market. In Q3 2024, XPeng recorded its highest-ever gross margin of 15.3%, demonstrating that the revenue surge is translating into improving unit economics rather than being subsidised by lower pricing.

NIO operates in China's premium battery electric vehicle segment, with its flagship lineup - ES8, ES6, EC6, ET7 and ET9 - targeting buyers in the RMB 200,000–500,000 price range. The company's most distinctive competitive differentiator is its battery swap network: a proprietary infrastructure of over 2,700 power swap stations globally that allows NIO owners to replace a depleted battery pack with a fully charged one in approximately three minutes, eliminating the charging wait time that remains the primary EV adoption barrier for premium buyers who value their time highly.

NIO delivered 221,970 vehicles in 2024, a 30.7% year-over-year increase, with Q3 2024 reaching a record 61,855 deliveries - maintaining its dominant 48% market share in China's BEV segment priced above RMB 300,000. The company is scaling monthly production toward a 20,000-unit run rate and simultaneously building out its Onvo sub-brand to target the more competitive mid-market segment with more accessible price points. Vehicle margins of 13.1% in Q3 2024 reflect ongoing component cost improvements.

Lucid Group is perhaps the most technologically ambitious EV company on this list, and the one with the steepest gap between engineering capability and financial self-sufficiency. The company's flagship Lucid Air sedan holds world records for EV range - exceeding 500 miles per charge on certain configurations - and its proprietary powertrain efficiency represents a genuine advance over Tesla's comparable long-range models. Lucid develops its hardware and software entirely in-house, from battery cells to the software-defined vehicle architecture, enabling performance specifications that no other production EV has matched.

In 2024, Lucid delivered 10,241 vehicles - its best year to date - and management noted the Lucid Air was the top-selling EV in its class in the US during the second half of the year, outperforming some gasoline competitors in the same segment. Production aligned with its 9,000-unit target. Q4 2024 revenue reached $234.5 million, with gross margins improving from negative 225% to negative 114% - a dramatic improvement that reflects the company's path toward eventually reaching profitability as production scales. Lucid's financial runway is supported by substantial backing from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which continues to fund the company's growth phase.

Li Auto is, by a significant margin, the most financially robust and operationally mature of the Chinese new-energy vehicle manufacturers on this list. In 2024, the company became the first premium automotive brand in China to surpass 500,000 annual deliveries - a milestone achieved in just five years from first delivery and a pace of growth that no other Chinese premium brand has matched. Full-year revenue reached RMB 144.5 billion (approximately $20 billion USD), a 16.6% year-over-year increase, with net income of RMB 8.0 billion and operating cash flow of RMB 15.9 billion - demonstrating that Li Auto is genuinely profitable, not just fast-growing.

Li Auto's competitive strategy has been built around extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), which combine a conventional combustion engine for range extension with a fully electric drivetrain, effectively eliminating range anxiety for buyers in China's less charging-dense second and third-tier cities. This pragmatic approach allowed the company to capture the premium NEV segment before pure BEV infrastructure was sufficient to serve that customer base. The L-series models (L9, L8, L7, L6) have become among the best-selling premium vehicles in China - competing against and outperforming German brands in the RMB 200,000+ price range.

In terms of autonomous driving, Li Auto has deployed a full-stack, proprietary end-to-end (E2E) and vision-language model (VLM) architecture that powered its "one-click point-to-point" autonomous driving feature across all Li AD Max users as of OTA 6.5 - an achievement that places it in the top tier of Chinese smart driving capabilities alongside XPeng and Huawei's Aito brand.

ACV Auctions is the most differentiated business model on this list - and the one most removed from the traditional auto stock template. Rather than manufacturing vehicles or batteries, ACV operates a digital B2B marketplace for wholesale automotive transactions, connecting franchised dealers, independent dealers, and commercial fleet operators with a network of buyers through a technology platform that combines digital auction services, AI-powered vehicle condition reporting, vehicle transport logistics, and financing through ACV Capital.

The company's 2024 results were genuinely impressive by any standard. Full-year revenue grew 32% to $637 million, with Q4 2024 revenue of $160 million reflecting a 35% year-over-year increase - above the top end of its own guidance range. Marketplace and service revenue specifically grew 38% in Q4 as higher-margin ancillary services increasingly contributed to the mix. The company sold 743,000 vehicles in 2024 (a 24% increase) and processed nearly $10 billion in gross merchandise value. Perhaps most significantly, ACV swung its adjusted EBITDA from a $18 million loss in 2023 to $28 million positive in 2024 - a dramatic profitability inflection that signals the business model is reaching the scale at which its operating leverage begins to compound.

Carvana is the clear #1 on this list - not only because of its 84 institutional hedge fund holders (more than any other auto stock covered here) but because the scale of its operational and financial transformation between 2023 and 2024 represents one of the most dramatic corporate turnarounds in the history of US publicly listed companies. Just two years ago, Carvana was navigating a complex debt restructuring that threatened its survival. By the end of 2024, it had become, in CEO Ernie Garcia's words, the "most profitable public automotive retailer in US history as measured by adjusted EBITDA margin" - while simultaneously delivering the fastest retail unit growth rate in the sector.

The 2024 numbers are striking. Revenue of $13.67 billion, up 27% year-over-year. Net income of $404 million - positive, for the first time in the company's history as a meaningful profit rather than an accounting gain. Adjusted EBITDA of $1.38 billion with a 10.1% margin, at a scale that would be impressive for any retailer. The company sold 416,348 retail units in 2024, a 33% increase from the prior year - achieving this with what management emphasised is only approximately 1% of the total US used car market, which Bank of America analyst Mike McGovern estimates at over $800 billion in annual transaction value. The implication: Carvana can grow significantly before it approaches any meaningful market saturation.

The engine behind this growth is Carvana's vertically integrated business model. Unlike traditional used car dealers, Carvana owns or operates its inspection and reconditioning centres (IRCs), its vehicle logistics network, its financing platform, and its customer-facing technology. This integration eliminates middlemen at every stage, compresses per-unit costs, and allows the company to offer a fully digital purchasing experience - including home delivery and a seven-day return policy - that no traditional dealership can match at national scale. The 2022 acquisition of ADESA's physical auction network, which initially appeared over-priced, is now yielding its strategic dividend: ADESA sites are being converted into additional Carvana IRCs, dramatically expanding reconditioning capacity without greenfield construction costs.