191–200 of 282 posts
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Climate change? I thought it was about Bezos taking a snipe at Tesla because SpaceX is way ahead of Blue Origin.
Human will be saved my the egos of 2 billionaires
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Yes. Musk has been exceptional at figuring out markets to drive a tech up the experience curve that aren’t his ultimately desired market. Often it takes multiple companies to do that.
Maybe five years ago I observed that Nissan and Tesla were homing in on the same market from opposite directions. Tesla built the Roadster which is a toy. Then the Luxo Model X and S Sedans followed by the affordable Model 3. Nissan built the affordable but limited range Leaf and just kept increasing the range every other year or so. They basically started each with one type of suck (Tesla=Price, Nissan=Range) and wo…
So, I am not sure if they are actually moving the right direction vs introducing new car with better specks and keeping the leaf as cheap as possible.
PS: I am guessing a reverse halo effect is going on.
"The company will be ordering 100,000 electric delivery trucks" Headline is false. Amazon have NOT ordered 100k electric delivery trucks. Amazon have made a announcement to get a lot of free press. For themselves (vitue signalling, oooh isn't amazon green) and for the company in which they have invested. Seriously. I'm announcing here that I will order bezos' underpants. You should take it as seriously. Corporate PR…
This article as well as others are a bit thin on that particular detail, with some saying "will be ordering" and others speaking of Rivian "receiving an order" or "a deal being announced". But, in any case: do you actually have doubts that this is real? I can see scepticism regarding the timetable and targeted number of vehicles. But for Amazon to just nope away now would be catastrophic for their $750 million invest…
"Virtue signalling" is not a cheap insult it's a useful discription of a behaviour. It also isn't in any way BAD. No really. Signalling that you are doing good things and should be thought of as doing those good things thus enhancing your brand reputation is actually what everybody wants, right? Positive PR for doing things that are good. Signalling to the market your virtue based on actual substance. Not paper thin announcements that we will be announcing something of substance later to stoke the news cycle. That's gamed up crap.
Again I don't see substance in this announcment. I see a false headline. I'm calling it because that is what it is and virtue needs to be real, not simply corporate PR "announcements" of no commitment. Or nobody gets good PR from doing good things of real substance.
Separate to that, looking at amazon stories lately is it possible to cynical enough about their PR? That's reflected here.
And remember when Uber “ordered” 100,000 Mercedes S-Classes? https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a28508/uber-or... Bezos is probably trying to pressure UPS (or has some other business motive) versus target Amazon’s carbon footprint. Amazon will undoubtably grow its own delivery fleet over time, but this splashy press release is probably not entirely about climate change.
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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.
do you have video in HD?
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…
The Tesla truck will almost certainly beat them to mass market. Look how long it took Tesla to scale up production -- the Model S shipped in 2013. It wasn't until 2018 that Tesla built their 200,000th vehicle. Rivian hasn't yet shipped a single truck to customers; they're in for a long and difficult road ahead building out their production lines. All that said I do hope Rivian is successful. I would absolutely buy an…
Charlatan-In-Chief also assumed he knows more about A.I and Robotics than many who warned him about his 'Alien Dreadnought' vision.
Rest assured people who are focused on building mass cars won't have the same hubris
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Sure, but one begins to wonder how much knowledge this company has of actual usage if they get something this straightforward wrong.
If they are targeting sales to a small number of large fleets, this doesn't matter. In fleet operations, the driver will never ever be allowed to change a tire. This is simply not acceptable, insurance-wise. You will dispatch a second truck to handle the delivery and also a tire repair service truck. An electric delivery truck is probably not even in the cards for small players, where gas or diesel is a better option…
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I think it's clear the lifecycle calculation favors the EV, but I don't think it's night and day[1]. Likely the emissions associated with the manufacture of the ICE and EV vans are similar (the batteries in the EV may even make it a little worse). But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use, and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant win for air quality. As you sa…
> (the batteries in the EV may even make it a little worse) I'm not sure it makes it worse. Lithium is a common, non-toxic element that is easily recycle-able. Pound-for-pound batteries are "just" mostly replacing steel and lead (and oil-based lubricating fluids) ICE engine components, which can be toxic, sometimes nearly impossible to recycle, and produced in very unclean smelting, machining, (and refining) operatio…
I think one of main constraints on battery cost is the price of cobalt, which is a conflict mineral. Some chemistries (like lithium iron phosphate) don't need cobalt, but a lot of the high-performing batteries do.