They haven’t even built a car but the company is already worth more than Volkswagen: the Rivian case – American startup that produces electric vehicles, trucks and vans – shakes the car world because such a thing, in the ultra-centennial history of the sector, had never been seen before.
It all depends on whether the Rivian on the stock exchange from the day of the debut has ground record upon record reaching a value of 130 billion dollars. More than Ford (76 billion) that invested in it, more than General Motor (90 billion) more than Volkswagen (129 billion). Rivian is currently the third-largest carmaker by value in the world, behind Toyota and Tesla. There is one particular, though: Rivian claims to have produced 180 cars at the time and delivered 156 to customers. So, as we said nothing. And not only because these cars are prototypes but also because these numbers are unmatched as they are “Rivian source”.
Rivan the electric suv that challenges Tesla
In any case, around the same time that Rivian boasts of having built 180 cars, the Volkwagen made 9 million. Not to mention that Rivian is at a loss of about two billion and has revenues close to zero. Volkswagen has revenues in 2020 of 229.4 billion and a profit of 10.6 billion. So? One thing above all counts on the stock market: the amount of investments that companies are able to collect. And Rivian from this point of view has collected many from its listing. Investors, or those who are willing to pour money into the company’s coffers to buy a part of it, are betting that Rivian will become a leading player in the production of electric cars, like the more noble Tesla.
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Not only. To drive the stock market crazy it was the fact that Rivian’s investors are not ordinary companies. But His Majesty Amazon (20% share) and even Ford (with a 12% share). But if Amazon blows the fire (it has already ordered 100,000 electric vans from Rivian), Ford immediately pulled out of the operation, dropping young Rivian shares all of a sudden.
“We are increasingly confident in our ability to beat the competition in the electricity sector. If we compare today with the periods in which we invested in Rivian – explained CEO Ford. Jim Farley – has changed a lot. About our ability and direction of the brand, and now we know much more precisely what our path will be. We want to invest in Rivian – we like their future as a company – but at this point we will develop our vehicles ourselves. “
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No sooner said than done: Ford has abandoned plans to jointly develop electric vehicles with Rivian and both companies will focus on their own projects. In 2020 the two companies had already decided to abandon the Lincoln-based Rivian project and it is now official that Ford will not use the company’s EV technology either competitor. The move is strategic: in fact, investors – people who understand a lot about economics but little about cars – historically believe that the big car manufacturers, such as VW, Daimler or Ford, will have much more difficulty than they foresee in converting the production of engines to combustion in less polluting electric motors. While startups like Tesla, Nio, Lucid and now Rivian can start from scratch and become with the agility of start-ups what Tesla has already shown that it can be done.
Ford instead aims to prove otherwise: it blatantly rejects the startup’s technology and tries to do it all by itself. Will he succeed? We’ll see. For now, the brand of the blue oval just can’t do: collect money as if it were raining, a Rivian specialty …
Explain the strategies, however, what does Rivian do with just 3,000 employees (just to understand Volkswagen has just under 700,000)? Basically a pickup, the R1T and an SUV, the R1S, presented in 2018 and produced (so to speak) in the Normal factory in Illinois. Being two American cars, they are exactly as Americans want them: gigantic. The Rivian R1T and R1S, which share the same floor and the same mechanics, sorry, electronics, have the same square design with those weird vertical headlights and dimensions nonstre: the R1S is just over 5 meters long and the R1T even 5.47. The prices are then aligned with those of Tesla, indeed a little lower: from $ 75,000 upwards for the R1T and $ 77,500 for the R1S. But then by 2022 cheaper set-ups and a variant with a 640 km long range battery are already planned, against the 480 km of the other. In reality, these are theoretical prices per hour because the machines can currently be booked with a deposit of $ 1,000 to be paid online
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