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Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

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51–60 of 173 posts

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#51
post #36

The financials may not look good right now, but the vehicles are extremely good. They’re already way out in front of the EV truck segment, and the big automakers have a huge gap to make up to reach the same level of quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to turn this around and become profitable.

I really like their cars, but they’re not practical replacements for a full size pickup truck (as the F-150 Lightning is). Anyway, they’re competing more with range rover and jeep than trucks, which is fine (and also a mostly-unaddressed segment).

> they’re not practical replacements for a full size pickup truck (as the F-150 Lightning is).

Why not? I’ve done “truck stuff” in a Rivian, like towing a 5 ton car trailer over the Sierra Nevadas. They have the same towing capacity and the Rivian has better battery range. They also cost the same similarly equipped. What’s the issue?

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#52
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"negative gross profit" ... that is corpspeak for "loss" right? I guess don't say "The L-word" is some attempt to paint a rosy picture? "This is not use losing money! We're making a negative profit by investing!"

No, it means that the column for gross profit is negative. Loss is used many times in different columns on the consolidated balance sheet.

You are incorrect. 'Loss' is a perfectly acceptable GAAP term for negative profits on the P&L, it's just that 'Gross Loss' is so rare, nobody really uses it.

You can even look at the 10-k and see they say 'Net Loss' instead of 'Net Income.'

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#53

[flagged]

Delivery vans are environment saving.

The carbon footprint for delivery is less than going to the store. https://sustainability.uw.edu/news/grocery-delivery-service-... and https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/29/grocery-delivery-...

https://ctl.mit.edu/sites/ctl.mit.edu/files/library/public/D... looks at the total carbon footprint which takes into account packaging too.

For buying something from Amazon, the largest part of the carbon footprint is the cardboard boxes and overall, its still more efficient than traditional shopping.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#56
post #46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear this all the time. There is no such thing as a huge lead in automaking. It’s an incredibly clonable product, and each company has huge teams taking apart each others products. It’s also not really the product that matters. It’s service centers, parts, repairs, manufacturing capacity. The traditional companies have entrenched supply chains to get parts, and cars, across the country and into hands. All the new…

I thought that until Tesla wrecked everyone.

[deleted]

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#57

[flagged]

It'd be far worse to have scheduled bus routes and train tracks cutting across the vast wilderness than the occasional electric vehicle cruising through.

A double track train line can move orders of magnitude more people than a 30-lane highway can. Cars and highways are space inefficient, and highways cause property values surrounding it to decrease due to the pollution and noise.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#58

[flagged]

I agree with you that investment in public transit is preferable to private vehicles in many cases, but the primary purpose of a pickup truck is not personal transportation, it's hauling a bunch of bulky, heavy stuff that isn't feasible to bring on public transit.

Regardless, public transit cannot go everywhere. Rural and light-density suburban areas can never be adequately and cost-effectively served by public transit. Sure, you can run trains or buses into areas like those, but either you'll have excessively low per-route ridership and unsustainably-high operational costs, or you'll have routes that require people to travel several miles in order to get to a station/stop, which means people need private vehicles anyway.

In these cases, you often end up with an overall trip that takes several multiples of the time it would take to drive your own private car. I get that many people might find it acceptable to impose that kind of situation on people (in the name of the environment or whatever reason), but I wouldn't want to live in that world. I use public transit whenever feasible, and only drive when I have to, but there are limits to what I will accept.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#59
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like their cars, but they’re not practical replacements for a full size pickup truck (as the F-150 Lightning is). Anyway, they’re competing more with range rover and jeep than trucks, which is fine (and also a mostly-unaddressed segment).

Likely a smart move. The F-150 Lightning is also a very good truck, and it gets to capitalize on the F-150 brand and customer base. They addressed a gap in the market (smaller electric truck) rather than trying to go head-to-head with the biggest full-size truck brand in the industry. Smart move.

The Rivian is a full-size truck and performs as good or better than the Lightning for similar tasks.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#60
post #46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear this all the time. There is no such thing as a huge lead in automaking. It’s an incredibly clonable product, and each company has huge teams taking apart each others products. It’s also not really the product that matters. It’s service centers, parts, repairs, manufacturing capacity. The traditional companies have entrenched supply chains to get parts, and cars, across the country and into hands. All the new…

I thought that until Tesla wrecked everyone.

Tesla was famously close to failing.

So on one hand, post-Tesla, there's more public readiness for EVs.

On the other hand, there's a huge established EV-native incumbent PLUS far more legacy brand competition in the market.

So it's still a really risky playbook.

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