12-01-2024, 02:21 AM
sekker wrote:
Rivian loses nearly $40,000 on the sale of every vehicle in Q3 - not counting R&D. This is cost of goods vs sold price.
The $6B will fund the sale of another 150,000 vehicles.
As I've noted on MRF before, Rivian has less than a 50:50 chance of being in business in 3 years.
I think their trucks look good - and I'm sure they drive great as they as an EV.
And I absolutely think we need real competition in the US market.
But Rivian sure smacks of being a bad business.
https://www.investors.com/news/rivian-st...ast%20year.
This is what AI says:
Rivian loses a significant amount, around $40,000 per vehicle sold primarily due to high production costs associated with their new manufacturing facilities, complex engineering designs, low production volume, and the need to invest heavily in research and development, all while still ramping up production to reach economies of scale; essentially, they are still in the early stages of building vehicles and haven't yet reached the point where they can produce large quantities at a lower cost per unit.
I believe this. The alternative is that it costs 40k more in materials and labor than the car costs? That can’t possibly be, so really, they need to sell more cars until they can distribute investments over more cars. It costs money to build factories, streamline production, etc. The better they do, the shorter it will take to achieve prosperity. If they do a poor job, it will take too long, but I think eventually if they could keep going, they would be profitable, even if they do an average job. They don’t have that long, so they are going to have to do better than average. I have faith in their product, but if the Chinese begin selling cars here, no current car companies will survive because their government knows they need to back their companies to get into markets. Assuming our government doesn’t understand that, of course.