Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#101

Post by perardi » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

lp251 wrote: post #73

perardi wrote: post #57

Warning: petty partisanship ahead. Our last Republican governor in Illinois spent some quality time trashing this company, which sure looks shortsighted in retrospect: https://www.adaptbn.com/home/2018/5/16/breaking-rauner-criti... He also made a point to trash all of Central Illinois as a place to do business, which is a heck of a strategy for business development. https://www.news-gazette.com/news/rauner-apologizes…

my father worked at the Mitsubishi plant for 20-something years. left a few years before they shut down. spent 5 years at Tesla. he just started at rivian, back in the old Mitsubishi plant. has to be surreal

My dad started way back in 1989, and had the fortune to take an early retirement package. Now he spends his days doing adult enrichment at Bradley University. Living the sweet mid-century union dream.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#102

Post by sleepydog » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #83

sandworm101 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the entire Middle East Except for Saudi sweet. There is plenty of very high quality oil in Saudi Arabia, which is no doubt in the heart of the "middle east". (Iraq and the UAE also produce sweet crude.) The really nasty stuff, the really energy-intensive gunk, is the tarsand bitumen from Canada. Saudi oil is positively green in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_crude_oil >> The term sweet originates…

I wonder who took it upon themselves to taste all the different kinds of crude oil to classify them by flavor... Job for a grad student?

Wasn't oil used medicinally for a while after its discovery? Not ingested, but rubbed on your skin to ease joint pain?

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#103

Post by leesec » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

Honestly this is a good move, I just have a quick question:

Does anyone anywhere have video footage of a Rivian actually being driven? Like, not in a commercial, someone genuinely driving it. I just want to know if they are anywhere close to having a production vehicle. If they have a single production vehicle that does what they say, then OK they "just" have to figure out scaling up the manufacturing.

If they don't have a single vehicle, they are years and years away, to the point that Tesla truck may beat them to mass market.

They have great marketing though.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#104

Post by trenning » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

perardi wrote: post #57

Warning: petty partisanship ahead. Our last Republican governor in Illinois spent some quality time trashing this company, which sure looks shortsighted in retrospect: https://www.adaptbn.com/home/2018/5/16/breaking-rauner-criti... He also made a point to trash all of Central Illinois as a place to do business, which is a heck of a strategy for business development. https://www.news-gazette.com/news/rauner-apologizes…

Some friends used to make an annual trip down there. It was where the DSMs were built so it was a fun drive down in our loud rattleboxes.

Neat they're using the plant again.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#105

Post by BookmarkSaver » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #93

Robotbeat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. This is my experience. Bought a used Volt for $10k 3-4 years ago and probably have only visited a gas station about a dozen times since then. And there's significant East Coast charging infrastructure. I bought a used Leaf (first gen, I needed 5 seats for my wife's car since the first gen Volt only has 4) for $10k a year or two ago and have used Chademo charging several times without problem. The low range of th…

I've always wondered what long term issues one might encounter with a Volt. Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives. Has anyone experienced any issues with summer vs winter blends? You're potentially carrying out of season gas in your tank.

>Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives.

This is something that is occasionally mentioned in speculative apocalyptic scenarios. It will go bad, after about a year you wouldn't be able to use any random car without swapping out its gas with some from a better preserved source.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#106

Post by csours » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #64

csours wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 700 000 000/100 000 would be 7 000 - So an initial investment of 7 000 per vehicle they want to buy. Now if they buy 100 000 vehicles at a rate of $100 000 each (pretty reasonable for industrial vehicles), that is 10 000 000 000 (10 Billion dollars). If it's $50k each, that will be $5B. $5-10 Billion in sales ain't too shabby.

> Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Amazon and General Motors were both expected to invest in Rivian, "in a deal that would value the US electric pickup truck manufacturer at between $1 billion and $2 billion." Assuming that valuation is vaguely accurate they must own a pretty decent chunk of the company too.

GM wound up not investing, but Ford did invest.

Disclaimer: I work for GM, I have no knowledge of this deal, any opinions are my own.

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#107

Post by gpm » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #103

Honestly this is a good move, I just have a quick question: Does anyone anywhere have video footage of a Rivian actually being driven? Like, not in a commercial, someone genuinely driving it. I just want to know if they are anywhere close to having a production vehicle. If they have a single production vehicle that does what they say, then OK they "just" have to figure out scaling up the manufacturing. If they don't…

I'm not sure making a single vehicle is harder to build than a large scale plant is... but I did find this via a quick google search: https://www.rivianforums.com/threads/preproduction-rivian-r1...

I wouldn't assume it's not a submarine commercial though...

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#108

Post by Rebelgecko » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #47

Rebelgecko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sooner Amazon helps get all of the oil and gas out of the ground, the sooner we'll be forced to adopt electric cars.

Why not just spend all the money you were spending on oil/gas finding/extracting/refining and put it into EVs and renewables instead? Then you will be "forced" to adopt EV's even earlier.

Amazon presumably isn't spending on money on oil extraction. However the AWS profits they make from companies that do are probably helping to buy these EVs

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#109

Post by Robotbeat » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #105

cptskippy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered what long term issues one might encounter with a Volt. Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives. Has anyone experienced any issues with summer vs winter blends? You're potentially carrying out of season gas in your tank.

>Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives. This is something that is occasionally mentioned in speculative apocalyptic scenarios. It will go bad, after about a year you wouldn't be able to use any random car without swapping out its gas with some from a better preserved source.

I suspect it'd work, just not recommended. I drive around with nearly 6 month old gas all the time and have used >1 year old gas in lawnmowers and boats (etc). I suspect it'd run rough after a year or so, but probably good enough in such a scenario.

EDIT: Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xktrYDny_lc

Re: Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

#110

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #100

delfinom wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've always wondered what long term issues one might encounter with a Volt. It's a Chevy...so expect some pretty bad engineering defects with everything but the engine/drivetrain.

I've had an incredibly good experience with the Volt. They deployed their best engineers to work on it. It was probably the best made Chevy at the time, a kind of flagship project.

> It was probably the best made Chevy at the time, a kind of flagship project.

In 2013, the Volt and Cadillac CTS shared the highest score (3.00) of any General Motors vehicle in Consumer Reports Reliability Index (excluding the Pontiac Vibe which is really a Toyota rebadge).

For comparison: 37 (of 41) Toyota vehicles scored the same or better than the Volt.