101–110 of 171 posts
Why would Ford license a drivetrain from a company thats never shipped a car when they already have a drivetrain licensing deal with VW (who have at least sold EV’s).
I predict Rivian will use the deal with Amazon and Ford as an excuse to “pivot” from shipping any cars to customers, and it’ll be another decade of prototypes and vague licensing deals that dont generate any revenue.
> On Monday, Rivian announced it had raised $1.3 billion in its fourth funding round of the year, led by T. Rowe Price, bringing its total for 2019 to nearly $2.9 billion. > Rivian has been quietly developing vehicles for a decade, but it seized the industry’s attention in late 2018, when it unveiled a pair of eye-catching, high-end electric trucks. Rivian raised $2.9 billion over four funding rounds in the span of o…
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Many full-size trucks are never driven off-road or carrying/towing heavy loads, but the advertising for them always mentions these features. Some people call that using gimmicks to sell trucks.
So features are gimmicks when they're only useful to a subset and buyers? Even if they're very useful to a subset of buyers? That would make towing a gimmick.
> On Monday, Rivian announced it had raised $1.3 billion in its fourth funding round of the year, led by T. Rowe Price, bringing its total for 2019 to nearly $2.9 billion. > Rivian has been quietly developing vehicles for a decade, but it seized the industry’s attention in late 2018, when it unveiled a pair of eye-catching, high-end electric trucks. Rivian raised $2.9 billion over four funding rounds in the span of o…
Hardware heavy startups aren't like launching an app.
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Okay fine. As long as we're not believing announcements, then Rivian’s prices are promotional too. And so are the specs. So this conversation is pointless.
Part of me wants to believe Elon et al. at Tesla has a soft-spot for Rivian and - yes - while the Cybertruck could crush Rivian - they want to see Rivian succeed because an EV monopoly over all vehicle classes might mean an own-goal for combating global climate change: competition is important, and the appearance of competition even more-so.
Tesla's lack of reciprocity is disappointing.
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It's manufacturing, not software. While one can produce one million copies of a binary for cheap and no lead time, producing one million physical objects requires setting up production lines, quality control checks, rework stations, warehousing, supply chains and controls, and so on.
Not to mention all of the regulatory requirements at the state and federal levels across many countries. Selling a car isn't far off trying to sell a medical device.
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>> truck for its utility which one makes more sense Anyone that used thier Truck for actual work will tell you the CyberTruck is 100% not practical as a work Truck for many reasons not the least of which is the Bed (or Vault) design. The CyberTruck seems to appeal to Hipsters and Urbanites that want a "Urban" truck, you are not going to be seeing the CyberTruck on the Farm or Jobsite Ohh it also appeals to Gen X's th…
OK, list them out. What are the reasons that the design is impractical?
As oft stated, the slope of the bed's walls makes side-loading difficult. This may not seem too significant day-to-day given the bed's volume, but if you're doing commercial work (construction, professional moving, etc), you'll get a lot of items that don't properly fit in the bed's volume. Even the cladding like on the Chevy Avalanche can be obnoxious, if not impossible to work around with some loads.
The body also doesn't look as ammenable to aftermarket modifications as its competitors. Standard racks and bed rails won't be compatible with it, which are pretty much standard mods for any contractor.
On the more elaborate side, you couldn't replace the back end of the vehicle with a domain-oriented work box.
I think a more utility-oriented cybertruck would have gone cab-over like an Isuzu elf, and used a more raditional, if elongated bed-design.
The tonneau cover and specs are nice, but it needs to function more as a modular platform, and have traditional rear end if it wants to compete broadly in the "practical pickup" space.
Great as a lifestyle vehicle, I expect your average truck owner will get more than enough utility from it, and it'll be a dream off-road. But I don't think most of the critiques leveraged against it are being made from the mindset of a consumer who only occasionally needs the pickup portion of their vehicle.
I don't follow news on thr subject but they look cool as hell.
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When it comes to utility design the Rivian is far far ahead. It's not about more conventional but about more convenient. One example: you cannot throw stuff in the back of the Tesla from the side. And when it comes to towing: nobody will use an electric vehicle yet. You can buy a gas truck for half the price with the same towing capacity. A gas truck with the same price as the Tesla will have twice the towing capacit…
Have you owned a truck? How often are you throwing things into the bed from the side? What are these things?
... Aren't all the Teslas skateboard design? Isn't the skateboard design the basic EV design since the EV prototypes from the 90s? This seems basically like a Rivian press release reprinted.
Yeah I think the innovation here is in the business model, not the engineering. I really do like the four motor design on the Rivian platform though. It opens up a lot of possibilities for improved performance/handling/safety and off-road capability. The 'tank turn' demo is kind of a gimmick but also not - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzwM8KE2L3I Edit: Add mecanum wheels and you could strafe (at least until they f…