I also invested up to $5B.
I invested up to $10B.
Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
61–70 of 91 posts
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#62I also pointed this out in the other thread, but VW is currently building up a direct competitor to Rivian. VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious.
Car manufacturers' interconnecion is amazing by itself. Direct "competitors" share engines, gear boxes [1], or the whole vehicle [2] (modifying just interior and badges, of course). Seems like they adopt the same strategy as laptop manufacturers did (though likely the other way around) - cheap and middle range cars are OEM ones, especially commercial vehicules (made under someone's license with minimum modifications)…
Most of the components used are developed by other companies such as Bosch, Continental, Magna, Autoliv, Marelli etc.
The car manufacturers build up their cars using these almost off-the-shelf components.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious." If you've ever driven a Volkswagen EV and compared their software experience to what the likes of Rivian, Tesla, and Polestar have, this will come as no surprise.
As a VW EV owner (ID.4), I can attest to this. The software is a burning dumpster fire, usability is terrible, the most common workflows break or simply never work, the car forgets even basic settings like whether you want to charge to 80% or 100%, and even the bare basics like the windows going predictably up when you press both "up" buttons sometimes fail (race conditions, apparently). It's an absolute disgrace. I…
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Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#64I also pointed this out in the other thread, but VW is currently building up a direct competitor to Rivian. VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious.
> "VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious." If you've ever driven a Volkswagen EV and compared their software experience to what the likes of Rivian, Tesla, and Polestar have, this will come as no surprise.
These are companies that might never treat "software" as a core part of the product, and mostly manage it as a cost center.
The fact that VW invests in Rivian so it can potentially "use" its software is pretty telling in my opinion.
It's hard for companies to change that though. I think Apple did it well. AMD still needs to do it fully.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#65Good news for both companies. I'm a bit surprised, because I thought VW would be pissed at Rivian that the R3 basically looks like a 1991 VW Golf[1] Country[2]. [1]: VW Rabbit for the North Americans [2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/49087163666
The R3 is definitely going to be the thing that gets them into Europe. It looks fantastic and actually fits on our roads.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They even tried to create a separate company This is an attempt to sidestep the politically hairy problem of changing a company’s culture. This never works because the daughter company either gets eaten by the more powerful parent company‘s culture, or their output is ignored and never integrated back into the parent.
What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?
The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing.
These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal.
Basically, the leadership expect to hire talents for the same pay(or sometimes less) of what is paid in core group but forget that core group gets plenty other benefits(union benefits are immense things, educational budgets, pursue some other stuff for a while and then come back anytime to take up where you left off, family benefits, discounts, profit sharing etc.) and get confused when people obviously don't want to work for that kind of pay minus all the benefits.
So eventually, they hire a lot of expensive consultants, who create lot of busywork to induce artificial lack of manpower to hire more of them. Eventually, a lot of budget is spent, only thing left to show are a lot of irrelevant proof of concepts. Then core group finance people comes asking for massive budget cuts, when all of these consultants leave(with any domain knowledge) and suddenly a small firefighter internal people have to start cleaning up the mess and work long hours. Thanks to good social benefits, most people internally get frustrated due to such bad conditions and leave and then eventually the company folds.
Sadly, it is mostly a repeat playbook of big names and I have seen it happen three times already. I don't blame the consultant firms as it is not their fault to make as much billing as possible because they know there will be budget cut anytime. I don't blame internal people leaving because, they are never paid fairly, subjected to very bad conditions and they are free to leave and care about their wellbeing.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#67Good news for both companies. I'm a bit surprised, because I thought VW would be pissed at Rivian that the R3 basically looks like a 1991 VW Golf[1] Country[2]. [1]: VW Rabbit for the North Americans [2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/49087163666
The R3 looks much more like a Range Rover than a small and nimble 90s VW Golf.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#68They have the ID platform but it is too expensive for making the ID.2 and a potential Renault tieup with their cheap EV Zoe/Dacia platform fell through.
They also have a tie-up with Xpeng in China for a China only EV platform.
Why have another iron in the fire with Rivian if they only make a US only truck and compact SUV ???.
VW is flailing about.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember in the beginning they were heavily criticized for the looks. They stuck to it, and now it's a recognizable (and trusted - more or less) brand.
I didn't hear much criticism. Have always thought they did well with the styling. And yeah, I might even say they have the best brand image of any electric car company at this point - which could be a big part of why VW wants this relationship.
R7 is gorgeous. If only I could afford it.
Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious." If you've ever driven a Volkswagen EV and compared their software experience to what the likes of Rivian, Tesla, and Polestar have, this will come as no surprise.
These are companies that might never treat "software" as a core part of the product, and mostly manage it as a cost center. The fact that VW invests in Rivian so it can potentially "use" its software is pretty telling in my opinion. It's hard for companies to change that though. I think Apple did it well. AMD still needs to do it fully.
>These are companies that might never treat "software" as a core part of the product, and mostly manage it as a cost center.
VW definitely does not believe that Software is unimportant or not a core part of the product.
They even tried to make their own software company to fix their inability to do software right.