This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the biggest news of all, Rivian and Volkswagen announced a $5 billion joint venture that will co-develop core parts of the hardware and software platform to be used in cars from both automakers.
We love that because it aligns so beautifully with our mission: the ability to help accelerate putting highly compelling electric vehicles into the market, which will ultimately drive more demand.
A core objective of how we’ve structured the joint venture is that we don’t lose the velocity and the speed and the decisiveness and lack of bureaucracy that exists within our software function today.
Beyond just simplification of how we manage running over-the-air updates across so many different instances, it also gets us a lot of supply chain leverage in a way that we, Rivian, haven’t had in the past.
In fact, you can imagine the day of the announcement, I had a handful of phone calls from CEOs of big semiconductor suppliers, and they’re like, “Hey, we can work harder on pricing.” So, that was awesome.
So, taking away all those mechanical design studio packaging constraints that we had before, and then solving the biggest challenge, which was network architecture by this being that as a project, it’s just a very different type of relationship.
The original article contains 11,459 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 98%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is modestly interesting. My brother worked here before they had layoffs about two years ago, and had a generally favorable opinion of the company and leadership.
Fundamentally, while I think RJ seems like a sound businessman and technologist, and I like the company’s taste a bit, I will never be able to reconcile his views with mine. He very openly views cars as computers and software and services that happen to move you around, and I would like it to be a machine over which I have as minimal a relationship as possible with the manufacturer after I acquire the product.
Still, I wish them luck.
Yeah no my relationship with my vehicles manufacturer should pretty much be “PART BAD SEND NEW ONE.”
Sadly that era of the vehicle industry is gone. Even if we completely forget electric vehicles, getting parts for any car is becoming harder, because the manufacturer is trying to sell you assembled bundles of things, rather than individual items.
But then we have electric cars. Swapping the battery in these is insanely costly, and if you need other repairs, brands like Tesla would purposefully go out of their way to ensure you only replace things at Tesla certified shops
Funnily enough, the Rivian CEO talks about exactly that in this interview
In that scenario, we would be using one ECU to do everything I just described. In this case, it’s a much larger computer, but one computer. It’s a massive simplification for how we think about software development and also drives a lot of cost out of the vehicle because instead of 70 to 80 little boxes — little computer boxes with wiring and connectors and everything else — we have, in our case, seven.
So when one small thing stops working, you now have to buy their proprietary, expensive ECU instead of a cheap little microcontroller.
If you make sure to not charge the battery to 100% all the time, the battery of an EV will easily last for 300,000 km. There will be a slight reduction of overall capacity, but nothing that will impact your day to day life (unless it consists of driving 24/7). Overall, EVs are way more robust than ICE cars.
But yeah, if you’re out of luck, then repairs are expensive because of the reasons you mentioned.
I suppose I’m shilling here, but check out rockauto.com for car parts. They carry an insane number of car parts for basically wholesale prices. A lot of times you can still buy the individual parts instead of entire assemblies.
Yeah, people want inexpensive EVs. Especially with all we now know about how much of our data all manufacturers are selling. Even if the Chinese companies are blocked from selling here, someone will eventually make affordable EVs. Hope companies like Rivian are ready…
Rivian is also firmly planted in the luxury segment, with prices to match their clientele. We need manufacturer(s) to make EVs for us common folk in a price range we can actually afford.
Any new automobile manufacturer has to do that initially in order to make enough money to get the manufacturing and supply chain developed enough to create a car for the masses. They start with a lower volume and higher priced car to get the excitement for the product. Once they have that, they are able to start assembling a larger volume at a lower price.
That’s a take I haven’t seen before, but I have to agree with it. I was looking forward to my next vehicle being an EV, hoping that would simplify the multitude of problems that I’ve been having with ICE cars (most notably, transmissions).
What are the options now, when both gas and electric cars are more computer than automobile?
Ev conversion. You just get a new motor and batteries, everything else stays the same
I know that this exists, but does anyone have an estimate on the real price? How much a conversion kit costs + how much installation costs - how much you can get from the engine and parts that are removed? With the current cost of even used cars being fairly high, how worth it/reasonable is this really?
Haha a bike.
I hold out hope, actually, that as the right-to-repair movement continues to grow, eventually repairability and control will become more common consumer interests, in the same way that vehicle safety wasn’t something people thought about when buying a car before the 70s, and now it’s one of the main influences when buying a car.
Once people start caring – and again, I believe this is the direction we’re heading – it will become something manufacturers have to design for.
Saw a post on YT yesterday by a guy who had put 150k on his rivian truck doing real truck shit - towing, hauling stuff. Two years in and he still loves it. It comes with a great warranty.
Whew. I’m glad he’s happy with his purchase. I can’t ever imagine having enough money that I could drop that kind of cash on a toy, no matter how neat I think it looks.
I’ve never looked up the price. Someone should say what they cost for those curious enough to wonder but lazy enough to not look it up. I offer them one vote of approval redeemable nowhere.
I’m seriously thought that was Stevo
Steve-O if no one introduced him to drugs and alcohol, and all that ambition and gusto went into starting a business, not getting tazed in the ball sack.
TL;DR Customers want bigger SUVs so manufacturers should stop building crossovers/sedans similar to the Model Y.
i doubt this is true; most non tesla cars actually look good where is tesla looks like a dumpster fire… and don’t get me started on how garbage tesla interiors are.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty true at least internally, though their dumpster fire reputation is changing that. I’ve worked at a number of Tier 1 automotive suppliers and OEMs, and I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve had to listen to “We should do ‘thing’ because that’s what Tesla does”. It’s leading to a lot of shitty and anti-consumer practices, but fortunately I think some of the smarter leadership is finally seeing that they were shitty ideas all along, and was nothing more that techbro bullahit.
