A guy showed up with a Rivian SUV at a recent RallyCross. The course was super slippery and slow - there wasn't any hard acceleration, braking, or cornering happening. I would be interested to see how it performed in dry conditions but we didn't see him back at the next event.
Pics here:
https://benburkhart.smugmug.com/RallyX/51824-Susq-Region-Event-2/Heat-2
I regularly see a guy at NJMP towing motorcycles in a 14 or 16' enclosed trailer with his R1T. He told me it tows like nothing is there. 100 miles uses about 80% of his battery but he has all day to charge up on the RV hook-ups at the track. I didn't think to ask what battery he has but I did notice he had the AT tires, which must hurt range.
Another guy I see with a similar trailer tells me he gets 9mpg towing with his Escalade.
I read somewhere that on average, Rivian loses <cough> $42,000 <cough> on every vehicle sold. Apparently they're working hard to streamline designs to cut down on parts count and assembly time. Working hard to get Accounting into the black, and they might pull it off.
I think that's fundamentally flawed math. It's basically "Rivan lost $X last year and built Y cars, so they lost $X/Y per car". But the statement implies that if they make more cars, they'd lose more money. Not really. Making more cars wouldn't increase the capital investment in the new Georgia factory, for example, or the money being spent on R&D.
They did decide to bring the first viable product to market so they could start bringing in some revenue. Those first generation cars weren't production optimized. There were some changes last year that simplified them quite a bit and dropped production cost - I'm not sure if this is the second gen car or not. But the current production vehicles are definitely more optimized for production and production cost than the initial ones are.
Edit: I've confirmed with a friend at Rivian, the 2nd gen cars are the production optimized ones. They're apparently a whole lot better in many ways. That's model year 2025, on the shelf now.
I have nothing of value to add aside from that I absolutely love the exterior look of the R1T, and even their big honking SUV is pretty nice looking IMHO.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
The GA plant has been put on hold, so that is not an asset that will add to production any time soon. The better question is whether they will be able to fulfill their 5 year contractual commitment to the State of GA Joint Development Authority for payments and job creation.
I don't think Rivian put much if any of their own money into that GA plant yet. They haven't even finished the facility designs. The site development was paid for by GA taxpayers, not Rivian. They froze the project before they started actual construction.
Those per car losses were actual losses. Mostly related to their enormous R&D and startup costs. Their business plan was counting on increasing annual sales by 8X in order to get improved prices on materials and components. It included rail delivery, on site battery manufacture, etc. Without the GA plant, that won't be possible.
If you check with financial folks instead of car folks, it's pretty much agreed that their balance sheets don't look good.
I hope they do well.
Maybie the VW money will push the GA plant into reality.
In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Maybe, but I don't think so.
IL just gave them $827 million to expand the plant in Normal (so they will keep a lot of their production there). That increases its capacity with the new product line to 215,000 vehicles per year. They are only building 57,000 vehicles per year now, so I don't see why they need GA. GA will cost them $2.6 billion out of their own pockets (out of more than $5 billion total cost)
GA would change their entire process, and make a lot of things more affordable. But the only way GA will work is if they push 200,000 vehicles out the door per year within 3 years, ramping to 400,000 vehicles per year within 5 years.
They need partnerships to ramp production. VW is a good start, but they also need more from Amazon, and perhaps Apple (or others).
Normal IL is probably fine for them for now.
I think VW is buying market share, not profits. And they don't need to put money into capital or production facilities.
As a car guy, I really want to see them succeed. As an investor, I'm not buying their stock.
SV reX said:..
.....As a car guy, I really want to see them succeed. As an investor, I'm not buying their stock.
That's what I said about Elio Motors:
In reply to Indy - Guy :
Looks like you made a smart investment.
mfennell said:I regularly see a guy at NJMP towing motorcycles in a 14 or 16' enclosed trailer with his R1T. He told me it tows like nothing is there. 100 miles uses about 80% of his battery but he has all day to charge up on the RV hook-ups at the track. I didn't think to ask what battery he has but I did notice he had the AT tires, which must hurt range.
Another guy I see with a similar trailer tells me he gets 9mpg towing with his Escalade.
Both the dual motor, and quad motor versions are rated to tow 11,000 lb. and the truck itself is 7700 lb, so he likely doesn't feel much with a smallish trailer.
This Motley Fool report from May claims they actually do sell the trucks at about $38k below cost. That's the first Gen, the second Gen is a dramatic improvement and the improvements are mostly in the area that VW sucks at the most. The VW investment bodes very well for new VWs as they have had some significant challenges with software.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/05/12/rivian-continues-to-burn-cash-does-it-have-enough/
No comment on the production stuff, but if it didn't feel like 800hp, then you didn't have the settings right. There have been some $130k Porsches (GT3, 911 Turbo S if memory serves correctly) and a fully built EVO that I've ridden along in at autocrosses that come close to how violent the acceleration feels in a Rivian. But not quite as quick as the pickup truck.
Keith Tanner said:This Motley Fool report from May claims they actually do sell the trucks at about $38k below cost. That's the first Gen, the second Gen is a dramatic improvement and the improvements are mostly in the area that VW sucks at the most. The VW investment bodes very well for new VWs as they have had some significant challenges with software.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/05/12/rivian-continues-to-burn-cash-does-it-have-enough/
That report also says that those losses per vehicle do not include any costs associated with selling the vehicles, nor any corporate or research and development costs. That's 12 years worth of R&D being excluded ($4 billion worth of debt they are carrying).
Im not sure what a 30% increase in "line rate" is, but I'm assuming it means maximum output capacity of the production line. The current capacity is 150,000 (but they only build 57,000 vehicles), and the recent changes are expected to increase that to 215,000. That's pretty close to a 30% increase. But it doesn't represent a 30% increase in production. It's a 277% increase from current production levels. That's a helluva lot of growth before break even.
THEN they've got to sell them. 3X as many as they do currently.
They sure have a great product.
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