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Ford to put $500M into electric vehicle startup Rivian
- syntaxing 7y agoI'm super curious how this will integrate with Argo. Kind of smart for Ford to invest in an electric vehicle while their other subsidiary develops the self driving car capability.
- mtgx 7y agoIt's even smarter of Ford to (recently) recognize that self-driving cars aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and to double down on the electric car investments.
- PorterDuff 7y agoYou can certainly see why they bailed from their existing car lines. I can understand where all the car manufacturers have the same problem. They're afraid of building one too many generations of IC-powered designs (which are also following a Moore's Lawish rule of increasingly complex design) but aren't really sure what's next.
- jhayward 7y ago> You can certainly see why they bailed from their existing car lines. For clarity, I assume you are referring to the elimination of sedan models from their lineup. They are producing more crossovers and SUVs, pickups than ever. They didn't really have a choice, sales on sedans have been dropping like a rock.
- jdhn 7y agoI would argue that the integration won't be that hard at all. Like you said, Argo is focused on self driving capabilities while Rivian is more about the vehicle production, so there's probably little to no overlap.
- larrywright 7y agoRivian is manufacturing in my home town, so this is great news.
- durge 7y agorepresenting Peoria here - this is great news for that part of the country!
- larrywright 7y agoIt really is - especially having an idle auto manufacturing plant here. There’s not much else you can do with those, so seeing it put to use is great, rather than just collecting dust.
- JBReefer 7y agoIsn’t Peoria today more or less a Caterpillar company town? Seems like Rivian getting big would be amazing for the city
- larrywright 7y agoIt was. except the new CEO of Cat moved the headquarters to Chicago. But to be clear, this is about 40 minutes east of Peoria.
- throw0101a 7y agoThis is on top of Amazon's $700M in February: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivian
- sabareesh 7y agoAmazon didnt invest $700M but it did lead the round
- swarnie_ 7y agoFirst time hearing of Rivian. Cool concept, i imagine getting electric motors to move huge trucks around is a better/more mainstream application then a 0-60 in 2 second hyper car. Looking at their product line up this is strictly for US markets right? This thing would be wildly out of place in any town/city I've lived in.
- djrogers 7y agoThere are a lot of places that trucks and SUVs sell well - the US is the biggest right now, but Canada, China, India, and Russia all come to mind as consumers of vehicles like this. Global sales of just one truck similar in size to the Rivian - the Ford F-150 - topped 1M units in 2018, making it the best selling vehicle globally, beating out the corolla and the civic by 140k and 250k units respectively.
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- swarnie_ 7y agoThat might explain it then, i'm not fantastically well traveled outside of Europe and the only place I've seen monsters like this is Florida and Maine...
- 24gttghh 7y agoYou'll find big SUV's and pickup trucks in every state. No US state is purely urban. Even when it is mostly so, there are still people who drive obscenely large vehicles (ICE of course for now) like these electric ones.
- throwaway400 7y agoIt is also the case that full size trucks are heavily used as fleet vehicles for companies and municipalities. F-150s are very popular for this, in particular.
- samfisher83 7y ago
- maelito 7y agoTheir logo on the steering wheel looks like Renault's.
- sabareesh 7y agoLike that big auto companies taking electric seriously
- dmritard96 7y agoSorta like that. Only been a few decades of trying to make electric a real part of their product line
- cmsonger 7y agoAgree. I think more accurately it took a competitor doing it and showing the cars were desirable. No Tesla, no Rivian, no Ford investment in Rivian, no iPace, no eTron, etc. AT least IMO.
- navigatesol 7y ago>No Tesla, no Rivian, no Ford investment in Rivian, no iPace, no eTron, etc. AT least IMO. The Chevy EV1 proved electric vehicles "desirable" before Tesla existed.
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- rconti 7y agoI see it more cynically; as a way for Ford to hedge its bets, to say it's doing "something" without having to do much.
- saalweachter 7y agoFirst renewable energy and now electric cars have turned from something that was science fiction, always N-years off, an environmentalist's fantasy, laughable, to something that is mainstream reality in my lifetime. I mean, in BTTF II/III, the DeLorean was upgraded with a Mr Fusion and made a flying car but it still used an ICE to drive. How weird is that? Meanwhile, it's no longer a question that solar and wind are going to comprise a large fraction of our energy supply in the near future; it's only a question of how much, how quickly, whether it will cut CO2 emissions enough, and what the waste/lifecycle costs will amount to. Electric cars are the way things are going; even if Tesla collapsed into its own hype-bubble, every other car manufacturer now produces electric cars, people are buying them, the charging infrastructure is getting built out. The only questions left are what (large) fraction of the market electric vehicles will eventually grow to, how quickly they'll reach it, and whether it will again help our CO2 emissions enough, fast enough, and what waste/lifecycle problems will EV introduce. It's weird to me that between renewables and EV we have a real chance at Y2K'ing global warming.
- brianbreslin 7y agoAnyone know when these will hit the market? I'd love an electric SUV. As much as I would PREFER a self driving SUV (level 4+), I don't see that being truly amenable in the next 5 years.
- stetrain 7y agoThe models Rivian has announced are supposed to go into production next year (2020). The more investment they get the more likely I think it is that they hit that goal, but they're already taking preorders and production will probably be limited at first so there might be a wait.
- leesec 7y agoThey're supposed to go into production end of next year. Given that they haven't even built a working one, I'd say that's optimistic, but I do hope they succeed! We will see how much the extra investment they have is going to speed up the process.
- bluejekyll 7y ago> Given that they haven't even built a working one Do you mean off their main production line? They’ve been testing the base platform for years, and their demo vehicles look to be complete.
- grecy 7y agoJust this week at the LA Auto show Rivian's head designer confirmed the pickup on display is the only one they have ever built, and it was built by hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA6P0snL3hE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA6P0snL3hE
- adanto6840 7y agoThe interview begins at yellow marker, ~4:00. Maybe it's just me, and I guess it's really just a personal 'pet peeve', but is it off-putting to anyone else how he constantly saying "gives ME ...", "I have four motors", "so I can...", etc... Perhaps I've been driving people crazy all these years, but "we" usually sounds so much better (even if it is just you) and a lot less ... lousy and self-centered. Maybe he really is the guy -- it just rubs me a little wrong, especially when I suspect it really is we -- as in, the team.
- chrisseaton 7y agoIs 'skateboard' another name for body-on-frame? It seems like people are saying it's a big new idea, but it's how things used to be done before uni-bodies. Are uni-bodies not as suited to electric with their large low-slung power packs?
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoYeah, basically. But now the frame is solidly mounted to the body because in 2019 we want the chassis rigidity and can reduce NVH in other ways. People have been hard mounting the body to the frame of BoF vehicles to increase rigidity for a long time though so that's not new either. There's no hard line. It's like how at one point we had wagons, minivans and SUVs but now we have crossovers that blur the lines. Vehicle construction is the same. You can have a ladder frame and then shove a bunch of batteries in it. Is that a skateboard? What if it's a perimeter frame? What if the batteries contribute to the rigidity of the frame?
- oliveshell 7y agoIt sounds like it’s a regular truck frame, but with the gaps filled with batteries. Seems straightforward to me. Modern full-size trucks are still essentially body-on-frame.
- stetrain 7y agoI think it's the combination of integrating the battery pack into the lower frame structure of the vehicle, and also integrating all of the drivetrain components into that flat frame. In a body on frame vehicle the engine still sticks way up above the frame and has to be accounted for in the body design. Everything built on the F-150 frame looks like an F-150 (F-150, Expedition, Navigator), but something like VW's MEB platform can have a lot more vehicle shape variety (ID 3, ID Crozz, ID Buzz, etc.)
- rconti 7y ago"Skateboard" is a term that's been thrown around since the 90s to describe how EV platforms can be fully modular. I remember reading Popular Mechanics magazines back in the day, touting how EVs would let us drive our sports car to the dealer, have them remove the roadster body, and replace it with an SUV body for that long family Thanksgiving trip to Grandma's house (for example). It's a lot like body-on-frame, I suppose, but the idea is all of the powertrain is in a more-or-less flat device, and the seating area is completely disambiguated from the drivetrain.
- tonycomprog 7y agoWhere did Ford get $500M?
- RobAtticus 7y agoThey made over 3B in net income last year...
- setr 7y agoFord has a total revenue of 160.3 billion. I don’t think it was too difficult to find; justifying was probably the bigger headache
- mattrp 7y agoI’m assuming the justification was something along the lines of a) enabling a credible consumer of ford’s x, y and z products (from finance, to parts, to logistics, to whatever is tucked underneath the blue oval). B) enabling of a workforce that can provide a number of things back to the blue oval from software to battery pack design, motors, enlarged / shrunk skates to fit a number of non truck needs, and c) blocking strategy to ensure competitors like Nissan, Honda, etc don’t buy them. Electrification is going to be a huge issue now that the domestic US fleet has essentially abandoned cars (which traditionally have anchored a mfr’s cafe average). Once you dump cars for vehicles that get single digits to mid teens in terms of mpg, you’re in kind of a pickle.
- nradov 7y agohttps://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/balance-sheet?p=F https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/balance-sheet?p=F
- tonycomprog 7y agoI suppose when you're $100B in debt, $500M is a rounding error. I'm sure another part of this is build vs buy... tough for large, tenured companies to do what these startups are doing.
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- w0mbat 7y agoRivian is valued at $7 billion, and has not shipped a product ever? Crazy.
- TremendousJudge 7y agoTypical. Magic Leap was valuated at 6.3B[0] less than a year ago [0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/att-takes-strategic-stake-in-ar-company-magic-leap-in-its-latest-push-into-digital-media/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/att-takes-strategic-stake-...
- eanzenberg 7y agoHahahahaha, oh wow, thanks for the laugh :)
- DeonPenny 7y agoI know someone who worked there. Its a scam
- leesec 7y agoNor do they seem to even have a real product at this point. Not that they wont in 2 years, but still.
- gamblor956 7y agoThey definitely have a real product. They demoed their EV truck at the LA Auto Show this past year. They haven't made it in mass quantities, so at this point its more like the original Tesla Roadster, but at least one of their products actually exists.
- sixQuarks 7y agoMusk says it's at least 100 times harder to build EVs at scale, then it is to build a few prototypes.
- 7y ago
- wuunderbar 7y agoI know this is subjective but: Is there a reason they needed to add those distinctive and overly-futuristic headlights that screams electric car? One of the reasons I like Tesla vehicles is that while they look decent they don’t try to overly differentiate themselves. They look like standard mid-market cars. I would think that if Rivian is targeting the truck/full-size SUV crowd then they would lean on a more traditional look?
- bronco21016 7y agoThis has been my complaint of every EV up until the Tesla Model S. EV seems to equate to no aesthetic design to manufacturers. All you have to do is look at the Chevy Bolt. It’s sad we even call that thing a car IMHO.
- blang 7y agoThe opposite was true with the initial success of the Prius, the ugliness was a feature.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThe ugliness was simply the result of the relative priority of aerodynamics and prettiness.
- Retric 7y agoThe Tesla model 3 has a lower drag confident than the original Prius while looking much more like a normal car. The hatchback is inherently a poor choice from an efficiency standpoint. Oddly they are both beaten by the Audi A4 sedan and several others.
- olivermarks 7y agoI've always thought of the Prius design as similar to Birkenstock shoes - not pretty but the most practical in terms of aerodynamics and arch support. EV's need to focus more on aerodynamics to eke out range rather than look fast, which they are already are at low speeds across their torque band anyway.
- rootusrootus 7y agoSo, Ford will continue to work on a battery powered F150, and then they're going to use Rivian's platform to compete with the likes of the Honda Ridgeline and other unibody pickups? That actually seems like it would be a workable plan. Edit: To clarify, my basis for this is something Mike Levine said (he is Ford NA Product Comm Manager): "Ford’s battery electric F-150 has been under development for some time and will continue as planned. Ford is using Rivian’s skateboard platform as the basis for an all-new vehicle." https://twitter.com/mrlevine/status/1121027970917912577 https://twitter.com/mrlevine/status/1121027970917912577
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoOr they're dumping money into Rivian so at some point in the future they can leverage Rivian's drive-train tech in whatever they want.
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- Shivetya 7y agothe message I take away is this, Ford is so far behind they have to buy into something and do it quickly and loudly to show their investors they really are paying attention.
- dharmab 7y agoElectric SUVs based on a Rivian drivetrain would certainly appeal to a lot of suburban families.
- sf_rob 7y agoI'm really curious how their upcoming PHEV F150 does. It is planned to act as a 110v AC generator for job-sites, which is a really cool application.
- taurath 7y agoI can't imagine how incredibly expensive and heavy its gonna be with all those batteries. Like $80k base and 3 tons
- tibbydudeza 7y agoRivian sounds to me like another Fisker Automotive ... all PR and hype but nothing substantive. At least Tesla and VW ID are real and on the road doing real driving.