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Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

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Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#41

Post by Someone1234 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #27
iambateman wrote: post #8

The R2 was the first time I seriously thought about spending up on a vehicle. It looks good. But $45k++ is just wild to me. It seems like the market is undervaluing used EV’s, so hopefully the depreciation curve will bring these down to $30k in a couple years for us old-school folks who prefer not to have a $1000/mo car loan.

Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/19/cars-prices-inflation-suvs

People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs.

We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#42

Post by DennisP »

clipsy wrote: post #17
7e wrote: post #6

Length and width wise, it's smaller than a Model Y. It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space. Rivian calls it a mid-size SUV, but that is straight up bullshit.

> It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space. I miss the days when men looking to compensate would buy sports cars. It wasn't any less ridiculous, but at least they (edit: the cars) were better looking and more fun to drive.

If only those ridiculous guys who wanted something fun to drive had realized how much more fun they could have by making fun of people and feeling superior.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#43

Post by freetime2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
freetime2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm in no rush to have self-driving capabilities in my car for at least another decade or so. I'm pretty happy with the current ADAS systems found in most cars like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and collision avoidance - and happy to just see incremental refinements to those systems. At some point I want a self-driving car, but I'm happy to let Waymo and Tesla users test those systems for another…

Are you buying a car in the next 10 years? I’m in a similar boat. But I’m irrelevant to the car market because I’m not buying until I can buy a Level 4 car.

I just bought a new car, and will probably buy another 1-2 cars in the next 10 years. My ideal upgrade path for cars is:

* I wanted my most recent purchase to be a PHEV

* I want my next purchase in roughly 5 years to be an EV (hopefully solid state batteries are available by then)

* In about 10 years I am hoping that I can buy a car that can self-drive most of my trips door-to-door

One thing I'll add is that I live in an area that gets a ton of snow, and current ADAS features are basically worthless in snow. They all turn off once the sensors get covered in ice, or when lines in the road are no longer visible. So I expect that even in new cars 10 years from now, I'll still need to take the wheel to drive during winter. Basically the features are nice when they work, but I'm still going to want to car that is first and foremost designed to be driven by humans.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#44

Post by doctoboggan »

ghouse wrote: post #34

Anyone have insights on V2G or V2H capabilities? If we can have open standards to allow my car to interoperate with my home batteries (Franklin, Enphase, Tesla Powerwall or others), we'll all be better off.

I saw on one of the review videos that you can get 2400W out of the R2

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#45

Post by freetime2 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/19/cars-prices-inflation-suvs

People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs. We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.

I also believe this $50,000 stat is the mean car price which is likely to be pushed up by luxury car sales that cost 2-4x what a typical car costs, whereas a median price would give a better indication of what most people are actually spending. I did a quick Google search and wasn't able to find any data on median price, though.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#46

Post by JumpCrisscross »

freetime2 wrote: post #43
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you buying a car in the next 10 years? I’m in a similar boat. But I’m irrelevant to the car market because I’m not buying until I can buy a Level 4 car.

I just bought a new car, and will probably buy another 1-2 cars in the next 10 years. My ideal upgrade path for cars is: * I wanted my most recent purchase to be a PHEV * I want my next purchase in roughly 5 years to be an EV (hopefully solid state batteries are available by then) * In about 10 years I am hoping that I can buy a car that can self-drive most of my trips door-to-door One thing I'll add is that I live i…

> I live in an area that gets a ton of snow, and current ADAS features are basically worthless in snow

I live in Western Wyoming. While my Subaru won't drive itself in a blizzard, the radar is still useful.

My plan is to wait until I have something that can drive itself unsupervised in clear weather. Given that's Waymo today and maybe Tesla in ~5 years, I'm figuring something should be on the market that fits that bill within 10, which is how long I'll try to hold onto my gas-burnig Subaru.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#47

Post by DennisP »

7e wrote: post #6

Length and width wise, it's smaller than a Model Y. It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space. Rivian calls it a mid-size SUV, but that is straight up bullshit.

If you want to see a reviewer next to it for scale, Doug DeMuro is 6'4" and has what you're looking for, from various angles over the course of the review. Looks like a reasonable size to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUl_0087dyM

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#48

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Someone1234 wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/19/cars-prices-inflation-suvs

People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs. We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.

> There is a car-debt crisis

To what degree is this caused by car prices versus Americans' compulsion to keep buying new cars? Anecdotally, the folks I know struggling with car payments are almost exclusively in the latter bucket. But I'm open to having my mind changed with data.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#49

Post by nradov »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #27
iambateman wrote: post #8

The R2 was the first time I seriously thought about spending up on a vehicle. It looks good. But $45k++ is just wild to me. It seems like the market is undervaluing used EV’s, so hopefully the depreciation curve will bring these down to $30k in a couple years for us old-school folks who prefer not to have a $1000/mo car loan.

Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/19/cars-prices-inflation-suvs

Are you sure about that? The cost of repairing even minor collision damage on a Rivian is ridiculous.

Re: Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bee_rider wrote: post #28
para_parolu wrote: post #11

I really reality wish rivian create a better self-driving technology soon and make a proper competition to tesla. Rivian cars are so nice and well designed.

Self-driving seems like something where car companies shouldn’t all “reinvent the wheel.” A couple of the bigger car companies have projects on this, right? Maybe they could share.

> A couple of the bigger car companies have projects on this, right? Maybe they could share

Why should they? We're already approaching geopolitical competition at this problem, given self-driving cars and self-driving self-propelled guns and the like are basically technological twins.

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