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Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

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Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#121

Post by syshum »

landryraccoon wrote: post #50
syshum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>We're already past the early-adopter phase I disagree with that, Longevity of these platforms have yet to be worked out, we are coming up on the time when the first Model S units are going to start having failing batteries. How much is that going to cost? The Used Car market is what supports New Car sales, Tesla and other EV's are riding on the ability of people to sell off the ICE cars and buy into EV Once EV has…

I'm willing to bet that the EV battery longevity is even longer than advertised. I have a ten year old battery in my hybrid car and as of yet I have zero reason to replace it.

Hybrids are are good example of my point

The Toyota Prius have TERRIBLE resale value as the age largely due to the replacement costs of the batteries

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#122

Post by nealabq »

shrubble wrote: post #117

Surprised that no one has yet mentioned the US Postal Service and their fleet of 30+ year old LLV vehicles. Surely someone is trying to convince the USPS to upgrade to an EV based solution? There are 140,000 plus LLVs out there. The last one was made in 1994.

Grumman LLV is the name for those white US-Mail trucks with the steering wheel on the wrong side. I didn't know that until now. Thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#123

Post by notatoad »

shrubble wrote: post #117

Surprised that no one has yet mentioned the US Postal Service and their fleet of 30+ year old LLV vehicles. Surely someone is trying to convince the USPS to upgrade to an EV based solution? There are 140,000 plus LLVs out there. The last one was made in 1994.

The USPS was supposed to announce their next gen delivery vehicle (NGDV) this fall, but the decision is pushed back to 2020. There's a small American EV company called Workhorse among the four contenders for the contract. DHL was also trialing some Workhorse EVs recently, I'm not sure how that ended up.

https://www.trucks.com/2019/09/03/postal-service-delays-new-...

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#124

Post by syshum »

greglindahl wrote: post #45
syshum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>We're already past the early-adopter phase I disagree with that, Longevity of these platforms have yet to be worked out, we are coming up on the time when the first Model S units are going to start having failing batteries. How much is that going to cost? The Used Car market is what supports New Car sales, Tesla and other EV's are riding on the ability of people to sell off the ICE cars and buy into EV Once EV has…

The Model S has been out long enough that there's plenty of data about used car prices and battery replacements.

The first Model S rolled of the line on June 22, 2012, that is about 7.5 years

You can not believe that is "been out long enough" to factor in Resale values and longevity?

The Average Scrap age for a car in the US in 2014 is about 15 years, and the Average age of all light vehicles in operation on the reads as of 2014 was 11.4 years old and was expected to raise to 12 years by 2018 but I could not find data to confirm that

This means the VAST majority of cars in operation are aging used cars that are older than even the oldest Tesla on the road today.

Get back to me when the Model S reaches the decade mark and see if the Cost the the batteries exceed the value of the Car, and the real test will be if the low end Model 3 can maintain a 15+ year life span on the road

because if the EV scrap date is a full 5+ years quicker than a ICE car that is going to be a problem not only for sales but also all of the environmental calculations that make it "green"

ICE Manufacturers are targeting a 15year life span for cars, if EV can not do that economically we are going to have problems

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#125

Post by crca »

luckydata wrote: post #83
x3haloed wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually quite the opposite. If you need a truck for its utility which one makes more sense? The Cybertruck is less expensive, has more range, bigger payload, higher towing capacity, access to the best charging network in the world. Why would you buy a Rivian instead? The only reason I can think of is that it looks more conventional. If you need a truck, you buy the Tesla. If you want a lifestyle truck t…

the problem with the Cybertruck is going to be its size, it's humongous, it's in the same class as a Ford F-250. Going to be hard for a lot of folks to find the space for that behemoth, especially for the people that like to camp but don't have hard core needs like farmers and construction workers. I think Rivian will have the suburban-outdoors people market down pat if they ever manage to actually ship and the car d…

It’s in the same weight class as the F250 but it’s roughly the same dimensionally as an F150. Batteries are heavy.

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#126

Post by syshum »

fastball wrote: post #97
thdrdt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For over 20 years I have owned various models of F150 Trucks

and I access from the side more often than I use the tailgate.

Infact my current Truck is a Regular bed, and the one before it was a FlairSide ... I miss my FlairSide that is my one big disappointments in Ford that they stopped making Styleside and FlairSide Beds

I haul every day small items, and home improvement supplies, and other things like that

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#127

Post by crca »

I’ve never owned a truck before, mainly for economic/environmental reasons, but I am extremely interested in an electric truck. I’ve decided to order the Cybertruck over the Rivian, primarily for 2 reasons:

1) Tesla has a massive charging network that is expanding rapidly

2) The Rivian starts $30k+ higher than the Cybertruck

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#128

Post by nrp »

gumby wrote: post #61
jakelazaroff wrote: post #9

> 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…

> Rivian raised $2.9 billion over four funding rounds in the span of one year? And it's been around for a full decade without ever releasing a product? Does this not set off alarm bells? Not necessarily. They just signed some huge deals with Ford and Amazon, both of whom invested. What likely happened is that Rivian needed a lot of money for cap ex an inventory and wanted the customer to prepay. Those customers had a…

I agree, but I would guess the deals looked something like equity, first right of refusal on acquisition, some level of access to IP, and maybe something like timed or category exclusivity in exchange for investment.

I'd also guess that the money is going to mostly CapEx for infrastructure (facilities, automation, tooling, etc) and OpEx for headcount and sub-supplier NRE rather than to inventory. There are "cheaper" ways to finance something short term like inventory than giving up equity.

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#129

Post by shiftpgdn »

threeseed wrote: post #90
hourislate wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stopped paying attention to all these auto manufactures like Rivian, VW, etc. All they do is keep announcing how they are going to take the industry by storm but yet never release a product or are working on it. Meanwhile Tesla pumps out a few thousand vehicles a month and the media makes it sound like it in big trouble. Ford, GM, VW are junk.I wouldn't buy any of their vehicles ICE or Electric. I worked for For…

Not sure what you are talking about. VW Group has already released a car which is in the hands of customers today i.e. Porsche Taycan. And there are plenty of EV cars today from the big auto manufacturers e.g. Audi, BMW, Mercedes. Some of which even outsell all Tesla cars in a country or two. And it's hilarious to see you go on about car companies pre-announcing products when Tesla did exactly the same with the Cyber…

The VW group EVs are mostly junk and don't even compete with 8 year old Tesla's. That's tosay nothing about their pitiful charging network or substandard pilot assistance applications.

I am a German car fanatic and would love to own a German EV. The reality is they still have a long way to go.

Re: Rivian's platform approach to electric vehicles helped it raise $3B this year

#130

Post by shiftpgdn »

kjeetgill wrote: post #108

Since this is pulling all the EV experts out of the woodwork, do people have thoughts on Bollinger Motors' trucks? I don't follow news on thr subject but they look cool as hell. https://bollingermotors.com/bollinger-b1/

Bollinger is dodging all the safety regulations a normal car manufacturer would have to deal with by classifying their vehicle as a commercial light duty truck. It's cool but I think the company is doomed.
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