Rivian has done a lot of work moving from pitch mode to selling EVs. It has built an electric pickup and an electric SUV. A monster IPOIt built an electric delivery van for Amazon and wants to do the same for other companies. Now it plans to sell an electric delivery van. Even more affordable SUVs This could make Rivian a major player in the electric vehicle space in the coming years. And it wanted to build a brand new factory in Georgia, where it would build many of these vehicles.
Because of so many factors, the exact shape of the company’s future was difficult to predict.
he changed.
Earlier on Thursday, the company announced that A completely new version of its first two consumer vehiclesThe R1T pickup and the R1S SUV. Not only are they more technologically advanced, but Rivian has also made them more simple to dramatically cut the cost of building them.
Rivian also recently put aside its plan to build that factory in Georgia Right now, the company is choosing to double its existing facility in Illinois. This decision will save the company $2.25 billion and means it can focus all of its efforts on one manufacturing employee in one factory.
These changes mean that, for the first time since 2014, The company exposed the theft in 2018Rivian’s immediate future is actually remarkably clear. The company needs to sell these modified vehicles at a profit so it can sustain itself long enough to get the affordable (and adorable) mass market R2 SUV on the road R3 Edition (which took the automotive world by storm earlier this year) knows exactly where that will happen, and it even knows what it takes to get there.
“With Rivian’s latest move to refresh the R1T and R1S EVs, you can see how the company aims to move further into the ‘EV Valley of Death,’” Cory Canter, senior associate for electric vehicles at BloombergNEF, said in an email to TechCrunch. “If successful, they could use the fruits of this process to scale-up the R2 and reach the mass market on their way to the R3.”
Other EV startups arguably have a tougher path to traverse through that “valley of death.”
Take Lucid Motors, for example. The company has a well-respected product in the form of the Lucid Air sedan. But it has struggled to find buyers for the Air, with its own CEO Peter Rawlinson publicly admitting failures on the marketing side. It has only shipped fewer than 12,000 cars so far. by the end of the first quarter of this year,
Lucid Motors is now pinning a lot of its hopes on this Upcoming Gravity SUV. Given the popularity of the SUV form factor, that vehicle should have broad appeal. But its success is no guarantee, especially since its price is starting at the relatively high point of “under $80,000.” And Lucid Motors needs the Gravity’s success if it’s ever going to find its own footing. Planned mid-sized, mass-market EV,
Other EV startups face more uncertainty. Canoo has changed its business model so often that it’s often hard to figure out what it plans to do with its bulbous EV, revealed for the first time In 2019Currently, the plan is to sell to fleets and government entities. Faraday Future spend as much time in combat with its landlords, as it tries to sell its own luxury EV. Fisker On the verge of bankruptcy after dealing with a sharp drop in sales of its electric SUV and a number of quality and service issues.
It won’t be easy for Rivian. This is basically the forecast No increase this year compared to 2023And it got off to a very slow start. As a result, it may need to raise more money – a challenging task in the current economy.
But the company says changes to the R1 lineup have put it on track to reach “positive gross profit” by the end of this year. That’s a big deal, since Rivian is still losing tens of thousands of dollars on each car it sells. If Rivian wants to survive long enough to ship its more affordable mass-market R2, it needs these new vehicles to sell well.
“The path forward is clearer than it was a year ago as Rivian lays out its near-term plans,” Kanter said. “But ultimately, executing on both profitability and high-volume EV sales is what’s required for Rivian to become one of this decade’s EV success stories.”
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