The world desperately needs electric delivery vans. Rivian already has Amazon as a customer and as an investor. That's an outstanding combination.
The R1T is a super heavy, niche pickup truck for wealthy American households (DINK?) who like camping in style. It's not a truck for the industry, and it will not come close to the F150 in utility.
I totally agree the Cybertruck is a design from a comic book and I have no idea how it would pass pedestrian safety regulations. But the Cybertruck being a bizarre vehicle doesn't imply there's a big market for the R1T.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/motor...
And hints of the same coming out of UK and EU.
I'm really excited to see how Rivian, Canoo, Lucid, and the like handle thousands of vehicles being reworked from their first year or so of shoddy production.
Seriously, I was years into Tesla ownership when I saw BMW ads showing people dancing around, taking their phones out of their pocket, and holding it to the door handle to unlock the car, like this was some high tech innovation. [1] Are you joking?
There are MANY things established automakers do, but innovation is not typically one of those things.
1. https://www.bmw.com/en/innovation/bmw-digital-key-iphone-as-...
With Tesla, I feel like an Elon edict could pull all spare parts from repair stations in order to hit new order goals. Or some other nonsense; it would be impactful and unexpected.
There is still uncertainty even with a major auto mfg, but I expect their institutional knowledge to be better and less subject to the whims of Mr. Musk.
I'm not a big BMW person but I always liked the i3. I never got that close to buying one so I'm open to the idea there's some big catch or drawback I just didn't look closely enough to see.
I had to take it seriously because around the time we got the 3, PG&E was offering something like $10k in rebates on the i3 on top of state+federal credits. I never got serious about pricing, but to me that suggested that I could have a new i3 for $22.5k, or less than half the price of of a Model 3!
The reality is that the i3 serves an entirely different market. Yes, our Tesla sees 99% commuting miles, but when buying a "nice, new" car (which is novel to me), it kind of needs to be able to do it all. I found the Range Extender solution on the i3 to be pretty janky, and I don't remotely trust DCFC networks that are not-Tesla. This might be FUD; after all, non-Tesla DCFC was probably better in 2018 when I bought my car than Superchargers were in (say) 2015, but it's useful FUD. The range on the i3 is simply too short. You can't really take it anywhere, and I want my nice new car to be able to take me to the mountains, to see my family 500 miles away, etc.
Now, of course, for the money savings, there's the usual "well, rent a car for the 2 times a year you take a long roadtrip", and that's probably the rational solution, but I don't really feel that buying a car is entirely rational; I think it's largely emotional, and people construct post-hoc justifications for why buying the car they WANTED was the CORRECT choice.
I ended up selling a nice roadtrippable car for about $30k when we bought the Tesla, which means if we had bought the i3 I'd have kept the other car, and it would have been a more expensive proposition overall, to own a less capable EV.
Then, later, I bought a diesel SUV that's very nice for roadtrips so I guess the Tesla doesn't have to do it all, but, hey, like I said, it's not all rational.
Oh, and the i3-- it drove REALLY well. I was super impressed by the power and handling. I couldn't believe the grip on such narrow tires. I loved the interior, although the exterior was a bit of a mixed bag for me. We'd have to charge it every single night for commuting, where we charge the Tesla every 3 days or so, but honestly that's not such a drag, it would be more of an issue on days where you want to cover a lot of miles in one day. (lots of errands on a weekend day for example).
Feels like Ford is taking the electric f150 seriously and I think their future kinda rides on them nailing this so I hope they do.
I have absolutely no interest in the Cybertruck, the Rivian and the F-150 lightning are equally appealing to me for different reasons. Although I don't need a truck!
Making 50k a year would barely dent their annual truck sales of 1mil.
I am much more interested in the R1T than the F150 Lightning, as the former is smaller. It is pretty hard to use contemporary trucks as trucks, with how oversized they are. They’ve become minivans for overcompensaters.
There are a lot of us city-folk that love the Maverick because it is a truck for people who occasionally go to the home-goods store/dump/buy a large TV/etc, and nothing more (e.g. weak towing capacity, no room for tools AND a sheet of plywood in the bed). But price matters, the Maverick doesn't work as a $40K vehicle even as EV.
I am 100% convinced that this will end like the .COM bubble.
Their customer service is also pretty stellar - they even gave me the dimensions of the truck bed ahead of time, so I can build out a camper top in CAD and have it ready before my upcoming delivery.
Lets see how well their costumer service does when need to repair it.
We'll see how Rivian does once they actually ship something, I have nothing to go on with them.
For Tesla I know the software, charging networks, and current tech is pretty stellar. No clue about Rivian.
I'm pretty skeptical that Tesla can pull off the Cybertruck for the prices they initially announced, but if they do, that's going to be a big advantage.
Their SUV does look pretty interesting though. The Model Y is too small for what a lot of families now expect from an SUV and the Model X is very expensive.
Someone said that the R1T looks both 50 years old and from the future at the same time & that is emphasized every time I see one on the road.
From my close group, the biggest interest in it has come from ski-heads for a zero maintenance Aspen/Tahoe car that will be ready to run when they head in & the bed is big enough for most snow gear (does the gear tunnel fit a short ski?).
I bet the valuations of companies selling horseshoe, saddle, horses, stables, stagecoach, etc was high when Ford started out. Most people at that time may not have understood why Ford is valued so high when good money can be made selling saddles.
Technology evolves. Ford and GM are now the companies making horseshoes and saddles. This is reflected in the insane valuations of pure EV companies. Rooting for both Tesla and Rivian to be successful!
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g36005989/best-selling-car...
There is an abundance of cheap money courtesy of the FED that is finding it's way into the market. It isn't Joe6pack buying Rivian.
"Rivian managed to build a car that people actually want."
Didn't FORD do this with the F150? I don't know of one contractor that is going to buy a Rivian. Most drive beat up F250's/RAM 2500/etc.
"I think Rivians high valuation just shows that they managed to nail a market segment that Tesla floundered."
>as of Sept. 30, it had roughly 48,390 orders for its truck and S.U.V. in the United States and Canada from customers who each had paid a refundable deposit of $1,000.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/business/rivian-ipo.html
Here are Fords numbers.
https://fordauthority.com/fmc/ford-motor-company-sales-numbe...
So far this year approx 500k F150's and that's during a chip shortage.
Anyway, I hope they're successful but there is a lot of future growth and profit priced in and time will tell.
the vast majority of trucks are not owned by people using them for work. Rivian seems to have completely ignored the pro market, which is exactly how the pro market seems to be treating the F150. At the moment, electric trucks are still toys for rich people, and Rivian is leaning into that.
And Rivian trucks are for folks who want to feel like Bomberman.
How about people seeing them being the next Tesla and wanting to get in early?? And a dozen other reasons.
That people confidently say nonsense like this is just mind blowing. How the fuck do you know that?
Do you think the almost a million preorders are all by programers?
For a work truck you car about cost and performance, and Cybertruck beats the riven easily. The Rivian isn't close to being a work truck, they don't even advertise it as such.
And to get that kind of valuation you need much more then a prototype, you need to produce 500k and even then the valuation is not justified.
The hard part is scaling battery cell production. The shell of the vehicle is easy to change out if people are not buying it.
When I lived an an apartment, one of my neighbors had a 2 door Silverado as his daily. He was a 'car guy' and had an Ion Red-line I once asked about buying. He was actually -surprised- I asked about that and not the Silverado, because he had a lot of folks offer to buy it apparently.
I had a controversial thought about this, especially after the impending total-death of the American Car;
What if -only- trucks with 2 doors, or a 4-door truck with a full bed got the 'light truck' EPA special treatment? When we look at the chart of target MPGs by size/class[0] you can see there's a pretty big disparity in what Trucks vs cars have to get.
It's interesting to think about all of this in the face of the automakers' recent actions; EV/Hybrid trucks help the CAFE ratings, and part of me is asking whether the Explorer going back to Body-on-Frame was to keep it from being classified as a Car. None of this would be new, of course; the PT Cruiser and Chevy HHR's existence were in some ways prolonged, if not a result of the fact they counted as Trucks for Fuel Economy.
I think in the face of all the talk we have about climate change, it's worth looking at what we can do as individuals to reduce footprint. That's part of why I'm switching my daily to the Maverick Hybrid (if it ever shows up, lol)
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
I thought the cartels and war lords were the target market?
Not only are most of the specs better, the price is better for the lower end versions, and get unique features like steel and armor glass. There was a toddler killed by a stray bullet on I-880 last weekend, I'm thinking he might have survived in a Cybertruck.
Of course the downside is maybe gangs will start buying Cybertrucks and use them for drive bys.
I mean, the stats on HP, range, towing capacity, etc are all publicly available.
"Scaringe will hold all outstanding Class B common shares after the IPO and get 10 votes per share,"
The new normal (see Google, Facebook, Zynga, etc). You can own 6% of the company but retain full control.
You get to have your cake and eat it too if you are a founder.
As an investor in these modern Class A "shares" you are just playing the game of musical chairs.
Where is the fundamental value in Class A ?
It used to be that if you did not care for control, you either bought bonds or preferred shares.
So your comment is actually moot since all EV truck companies will sell as many as they can produce, the styling does not matter at all.
Supply may be fully consumed, but demand may not be equal, allowing for one company to demand a higher premium on their product over another. Fantastic example of this is AMD slashing the price of the 5800x in response to Intel 12th gen. It's not like there isn't a chip shortage and supply isn't fully saturated.
Yeah, and 1M+ "nobodies" have already put in pre-orders sight unseen, including me. /s
Personally I think Rivian occupies a rather uncomfortable middle ground between a "traditional" truck, a market which will be dominated by Ford, and a "reimagined" truck, a market which will be dominated by Tesla.
I'm sure they'll do reasonably well - rising tide lifts all boats, but perhaps not as well as the established players, unless they have some tricks up their sleeve that we don't know about.
Rivian managed to build a car that people actually want. Their car is a really great pickup truck with all the stuff that people want in a utility vehicle (flexible storage space! air compressor! power outlets! easy to build out!)
And the Rivian looks close enough to a normal pickup that people aren't going to feel stupid driving them.
Nobody who wants a work / camping / towing truck is going to buy a Cybertruck. A cybertuck is a car for programmers who make too much money and want to feel like Robocop.
I think Rivians high valuation just shows that they managed to nail a market segment that Tesla floundered.