
Ford to put $500M into electric vehicle startup Rivian - Element_
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rivian-ford-motor/ford-motor-puts-500-million-into-electric-pickup-producer-rivian-idUSKCN1S01LD
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rootusrootus
So, 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
Or 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.

~~~
Shivetya
the 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.

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wuunderbar
I 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?

~~~
rangersanger
Forget the headlines, it's a pickup truck that doesn't list bed length in the
marketing materials.

The pickup truck is the new SUV, but come on. At least let me pretend to
consider if I can fit a sheet of drywall in there.

Also, I hate,hate,hate the trend of putting the spare under the bed floor,
instead of under the frame. Clearly a design decision by someone that doesn't
use their pickup bed for picking things up...

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village-idiot
> Clearly a design decision by someone that doesn't use their pickup bed for
> picking things up...

To be fair, this is the vast majority of truck drivers. Exceedingly few trucks
sold today will ever be asked to do something that requires a truck, most are
commuter vehicles driver for social status reasons. A few occasionally might
tow a boat.

~~~
sorenjan
All while our only planet is going to shit because of fossil fuel usage.
American fuel is too cheap, making this kind of excessive fuel burning
possible without paying the external cost.

~~~
village-idiot
It’s also an unwise business plan. Ford cancelled all of their sedans in the
US except the mustang, which is clearly a cheap fuel bet. I personally call
this plan “bonuses today, bankruptcy tomorrow”.

In a sign that the universe has a sense of irony, the F-150 factory promptly
caught on fire when they announced this.

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w0mbat
Rivian is valued at $7 billion, and has not shipped a product ever? Crazy.

~~~
davej
That's insane. One-third of Tesla's market cap and they seem to be far behind
in self-driving, battery tech, charging infrastructure and product
development.

~~~
eanzenberg
Pretty smart they aren't sinking any $$$ into self-driving moonshot tech. Keep
lean, build a high-performance tight truck/suv with current driver-assist
tech.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
Self-driving is the future. Mankind will one day realize 1.25 million deaths a
year from crashes is unacceptable. Tesla is on the forefront of that, it would
be dumb not to be sinking money into it. If they don't now, they'll lose their
lead, lose marketshare, and lose their training data.

~~~
Spivak
You do realize that everybody still drives knowing the risk? The driving force
behind self-driving cars is convenience, it will never be safety -- especially
when the fist $x decades of mass-adopted self-driving cars will be more
dangerous than human drivers. If safety was that important and the political
capital existed to actually change things then we could make a huge dent with
just the things we know right now.

~~~
rodiger
Current self-driving cars are already orders of magnitude safer than human
drivers. I agree convenience is likely the largest driving factor but safety
is definitely emphasized.

~~~
akgerber
Per what data? Human-driven cars cause 1.25 deaths per 100 million VMT in the
US:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States)
Even Waymo is nowhere near 100M miles driven:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsilver/2018/07/26/waymo-
ha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsilver/2018/07/26/waymo-has-the-most-
autonomous-miles-by-a-lot/#c0edf7ee53b8)

There's not nearly enough data to make a claim like that.

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throw0101a
This is on top of Amazon's $700M in February:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivian)

~~~
sabareesh
Amazon didnt invest $700M but it did lead the round

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chrisseaton
Is '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?

~~~
rconti
"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.

~~~
deftnerd
I think I remember that same article, or a similar one from around the time
frame. It also suggested some radical improvements. Once a car is based on a
"skateboard" design, the front window can extend a lot further down allowing
for some amazing views.

It didn't seem to think about the danger of removing a crumple zone, but it
was definitely eye-catching.

~~~
rconti
Actually, our model 3 has an amazingly low dashboard, it's one of my favorite
things about it. Side windows on modern cars, not so much. Crash standards
have made our cars cocoons you can't see out of.

But owning the 3 has definitely made me think a lot of the skateboard model:

* Flat floor, no transmission/exhaust tunnel.

* User interface (screen) is indepenent from body control modules and drivetrain. You can reboot the tablet while you're driving. Your turn signals stop making noise, but still flash! You can walk up to the car and it unlocks even if the tablet isn't working.

IT's interesting ,you can really feel how discrete certain components are, how
they can be rearranged and put into a different model. I'm sure there are more
dependencies than I realize, though.

~~~
organsnyder
I think your second point is true for lots of (all?) vehicles today, which
have an architecture of multiple modules communicating over a CAN (car-area
network) bus. I did a firmware update on my Pacifica PHEV while I was driving
it, and though I lost the ability to listen to the radio and change settings
on safety and convenience features (rain-sensing wipers, blind spot detection,
etc.), the car still ran fine (and all of the safety features still
functioned).

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brianbreslin
Anyone 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.

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leesec
They'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.

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bluejekyll
> 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.

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grecy
Just 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
The 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.

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tibbydudeza
Rivian 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.

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sabareesh
Like that big auto companies taking electric seriously

~~~
saalweachter
First 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.

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dragonwriter
> 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.

Electric cars are older than gas cars, and never really went away, though they
spent a long time as niche vehicles.

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syntaxing
I'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
It'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
You 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
> _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.

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larrywright
Rivian is manufacturing in my home town, so this is great news.

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durge
representing Peoria here - this is great news for that part of the country!

~~~
larrywright
It 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.

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JBReefer
Isn’t Peoria today more or less a Caterpillar company town? Seems like Rivian
getting big would be amazing for the city

~~~
larrywright
It was. except the new CEO of Cat moved the headquarters to Chicago.

But to be clear, this is about 40 minutes east of Peoria.

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maelito
Their logo on the steering wheel looks like Renault's.

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swarnie_
First 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.

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djrogers
There 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_
That 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...

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24gttghh
You'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.

