WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by autogear »

More than a few young people that lived downtown in Syracuse put money down on Elio's. It seemed like a good idea, but its pretty damned hard to bring a vehicle to market.
One of the more successful small market vehicles locally is the MV-1 for wheelchair bound people. I see way more of them locally than Tesla's. MV is owned by AM General though

Ditto what Jack said about driving modern electric vehicles...they really are the future.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by mk e »

autogear wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 10:18 am More than a few young people that lived downtown in Syracuse put money down on Elio's. It seemed like a good idea, but its pretty damned hard to bring a vehicle to market.
Elio lost there way...badly. They decided on a marketing narrative that the fuel savings alone would pay for the entire cost to own and operate a 2nd vehicle that was as safe as anything on the road and made in the USA....but none of that was true of the prototype design. They could get a tube frame fiberglass body thing with a Chinese engine/trans to market that would meet or come close to the cost goals, and safe as far as motorcycles go, but not anything like car safe not made in the US.

So they went to redesign, space frame, custom engine, 11 airbags... and factory startup cost went from about $250k to about $1B. Stick a fork in, they're done.

With a car the list of required sh!t is crazy long, trucks are a little better but not much, so they'll need the same $1B to setup the factory....that's a tough lift.

Remember Tesla started out selling a repowered lotus, buy the shell and retro fit the electric powertrain, WAY cheaper startup cost and it was a sports car sold to people who wanted to say they had an electric car so it didn't need to be reliable or practical or cheap and it was none of those things at $120k. They worked out the bugs with the batteries, charging, systems control, dealers, etc on a product that allowed failures without real consequences. Then they sold crazy expensive sedans to people who certainly had other cars...again low risk of angry customers who really just wanted to say they had one. 15+ years later they are trying to build a car for real(ish) consumers and they are struggling as build quality and reliability actual get measured.

Jumping straight into the work truck market is probably the hardest place possible to try to start out ........
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by PackardV8 »

mk e wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 10:35 amJumping straight into the work truck market is probably the hardest place possible to try to start out ........
Which is why this first Rivian is not trying to build for the fleet users or the heavy individual users such as are on here, me, swampbuggy, et al

I've been watching for news about light truck fleet users, as electric UPS/FedEx/USPS, are a natural for going electric; they're mostly urban, mostly stop-an-go, always back in the garage every night.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by midnightbluS10 »

Starting at $61k after tax rebates.


It better be one hell of a truck for that kind of money.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

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autogear wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 10:18 am More than a few young people that lived downtown in Syracuse put money down on Elio's. It seemed like a good idea, but its pretty damned hard to bring a vehicle to market.
One of the more successful small market vehicles locally is the MV-1 for wheelchair bound people. I see way more of them locally than Tesla's. MV is owned by AM General though

Ditto what Jack said about driving modern electric vehicles...they really are the future.

We were supposed to have a plant here. A lot of people put up money around here, IIRC. Funniest part about it is that Elio Motors tried to blame the Shreveport media and politicians for his companies failure lol. They talked about moving into the shut down Colorado/Canyon/H3 plant for years and it never happened.
Last edited by midnightbluS10 on Tue Nov 27, 2018 12:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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bigjoe1 wrote:By the way, I had a long talk with Harold(Brookshire) last year at the PRI show. We met at the airport and he told me everything he knew about everything.It was a nice visit. JOE SHERMAN RACING
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by midnightbluS10 »

Truckedup wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 10:13 am Like the Honda Ridgeline, it's a truck for people who don't like or need a "conventional " truck...Great for pulling a boat or occasional trips to the Home Depot..They will sell well in California, not so much in rural areas ....Overall it's good competition for the GM, Ford and Ram and their powerful but complex Diesel engines...
It's straight electric? what the range and recharge time?
It was listed at the website. <shrug> Didn't you click the link?
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bigjoe1 wrote:By the way, I had a long talk with Harold(Brookshire) last year at the PRI show. We met at the airport and he told me everything he knew about everything.It was a nice visit. JOE SHERMAN RACING
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by mk e »

PackardV8 wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 12:04 pm
Which is why this first Rivian is not trying to build for the fleet users or the heavy individual users such as are on here, me, swampbuggy, et al

I've been watching for news about light truck fleet users, as electric UPS/FedEx/USPS, are a natural for going electric; they're mostly urban, mostly stop-an-go, always back in the garage every night.
I think you're right that local delivery fleets are a natural and itvcould done by refitting something existing....but they are mostly sheetmetal with little serious stamping going on and basically no interior. So prototype, then pilot run, then expand the pilot, then launch with minimal cash burn. I could see that working.

The Rivian is trying to roll out a full custom everything product....pretty high finishes by the look of it. A similar mass-market fuel burning truck would be at least $55k I'd think, that doesn't seem to leave much meat on the bone for them assuming their volumes won't be close to Gordon or GM numbers, at least not at first. That's a lot of toolup cost......a quick Google search says they've raised about $450M (about 1/2 as a loan)...the seems like about 1/2 of what they'll need at best just to turn the factory on, then 6-8 years in the red before they make money, which means they need another $1B. It's a heavy lift. Cool idea though.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by midnightbluS10 »

Carnut1 wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 9:43 am I like the each drive wheel motor tech. I think I have seen that done on a 1911 Mack electric truck. The latest tech.
Pretty sure they use a drive motor at each wheel in the Porsche 918 Spyder. Is that not the latest tech? Why the snide comment?
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bigjoe1 wrote:By the way, I had a long talk with Harold(Brookshire) last year at the PRI show. We met at the airport and he told me everything he knew about everything.It was a nice visit. JOE SHERMAN RACING
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by GARY C »

I would not invest in an elec vehicle until they start holding some amount of resale value, a low mileage used one would be a steel however.

As far as a truck goes, I need a truck not something that looks like a truck!
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by Carnut1 »

midnightbluS10 wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 12:54 pm
Carnut1 wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 9:43 am I like the each drive wheel motor tech. I think I have seen that done on a 1911 Mack electric truck. The latest tech.
Pretty sure they use a drive motor at each wheel in the Porsche 918 Spyder. Is that not the latest tech? Why the snide comment?
1912-commercial-truck-in-service-with-curtis-publishing_100651254_m.jpg
Electric truck with a drive motor at each wheel is NOT new tech. The snide part is from growing up on Long Island.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by mk e »

GARY C wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 12:57 pm I would not invest in an elec vehicle until they start holding some amount of resale value, a low mileage used one would be a steel however.
Yeah. A friend has a bmw i3 and has been trying to talk me into 1..."they're so cheap, how can you say no!"

The original buyer gets a tax credit, then sells it at the time the credit requires they hold and the price is like 1/2 or 1/3 new sticker.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by hoffman900 »

Locomotives and other heavy industrial equipment have been using electric motors forever at the drives. Never really understood what took song long in the automotive sector, but I suspect packaging.

Cat just unveiled their new D6 dozer this week. One model has a standard transmission, the other is a diesel electric hybrid, with no mechanical transmission. The latter seems a natural fit as it’s really just (century?) old technology at this point.
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by Newold1 »

You can't compare Rivian at this point to Elio. It's not even a close comparison.

This afternoon Rivian release the new SUV at the LA show and I hear its a impressive design and product.

I think within the next week or so Rivian will receive all the capital they need to start up the plant in Norman , Illinois. Check some images of the plant. It's a closed Mitsubishi plant just built a few years ago. If you are interested go online and look up Rivian assembly plant in Illinois with images and you will see this plant is already set up for car manufacturing and should be way easier than setting up or building a new plant somewhere.

The big three are all already cutting production of coupes and sedans and instead ramping production on pickups and SUV's I think Rivian has great timing.

As for no 8 ft. bed. Current statistics in the market show that the quad cab short bed pickups represent over 85% of the sales in pickups.
As for the $61K pricing, have you checked out the comparable (loaded) 1/2 and 3/4 ton pickup prices! Can't buy one under $50K

Most V-8 gas engine pickups now are averaging about 15mpg in average driving conditions. At 15,000 miles a year that's a 1000 gallons at average $2.60 /gal = $2600 in annual fuel costs alone. That's about 40 full charges for a reduced 350 mile range versus 400 mile advertised and at about $8.00 per charge that's a $320 or lets say $400 per year in electricity costs to make 40 charges. So lets say I own the truck for just 6 years that represents about $13,000 in fuel savings over 6 years of ownership. This is not exact math but it gives the reason a lot of drivers are changing over to electric vehicles.
Another good reason for me is performance- 400HP versus 800hp and a shitload of instantaneous torque. Curious of a time slip for one of these Rivian pickups in an i/8 mile drag race! and the 60 ft time is probably pretty interesting for the drag racers here!

In any event TO EACH THEIR OWN! I'll just sit back and see how things shake out in the next year. Things get funny or strange and problems start setting things negative then I will just request my deposit back that I put on a credit card and if Rivian screws around returning the deposit I will make the claim against the card and get my deposit back that way.

I am not having this conversation to convince anybody here to follow my lead, I am not leading! Ia.m just discussing what I think is a big part of the future in trucks and SUV's
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Re: WOW! The New RIVIAN pickup just premiered at LA !

Post by mk e »

Newold1 wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 4:33 pm You can't compare Rivian at this point to Elio. It's not even a close comparison.

This afternoon Rivian release the new SUV at the LA show and I hear its a impressive design and product.

I think within the next week or so Rivian will receive all the capital they need to start up the plant in Norman , Illinois. Check some images of the plant. It's a closed Mitsubishi plant just built a few years ago. If you are interested go online and look up Rivian assembly plant in Illinois with images and you will see this plant is already set up for car manufacturing and should be way easier than setting up or building a new plant somewhere.

Elio bought a closed GM with all the tooling.....just sayin
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