Tag: Rivian

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Rivian confirms Apple Watch, Music integration is being “actively looked into”

Electric vehicle maker Rivian has confirmed it’s working on integrating certain Apple services into its products. In a recent Q&A highlighted by Rivian Forums user teddyang, the car maker went into some detail.

The company plans on introducing the option to unlock its R1T and R1S models using an Apple Watch as the key. Apple Music integration is also being worked on, according to Wassym Bensaid, head of software and development at Rivian. An exact timeline for introducing these features wasn’t mentioned, however.

On the Apple CarPlay front, it seems that Rivian is opting to create its own proprietary system. Infotainment, navigation, and notifications are some of the duties the company seems to want to stay in total control of.

Whether Rivian can build out a compelling alternative to CarPlay is something only time will tell. In the meantime, Bensaid says the company is working on improving its in-house voice assistant service.

More information on the recent Q&A session can be found here.

Source: Rivian Via: 9to5Mac

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Mobile Syrup

Tesla San Mateo office closing, Rivian looking to layoff employees

Tesla will shut down its office in San Mateo, California, one of the many locations involved in the development of its vehicles’ autopilot features.

According to Reuters, Tesla is laying off 229 employees, followed by a shutdown of the company’s San Mateo office. This news arrives just after Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla’s staff will be cut by 10 percent.

Tesla recently reported its second-quarter delivery count at 254,695 vehicles and will release more Q2 results on July 20th.

Tesla EV rival Rivian is also planning to make cuts within the company, which could happen as soon as July 15th, according to an internal email by Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe.

The company plans to restructure and suspend some of its programs. Musk recently said that Rivian and Lucid, another electric automaker, will face bankruptcy if cuts are not made.

In response, Scaringe said the company will be “adopting major cost-down efforts” to maintain spending.

As of Q2, Rivian has produced 4,401 electric vehicles and mentioned last week that it is on route to hitting 25,000 by the end of the year.

Moving forward with layoffs, Scaringe said Rivian will “assess the size and structure of our team,” and that the EV maker is looking to be “as thoughtful as possible as we consider any reductions.”

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Sources: Reuters Via: Tesla North

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Mobile Syrup

Rivian didn’t even deliver 950 vehicles in 2021

Rivian has made one of the most appealing electric vehicles ever, but it’s struggling to actually get them into customers’ hands.

A report from The Verge details that the company only shipped a total of 920 vehicles and lost $4.7 billion USD (roughly, $5.9 billion CAD). This is likely part of the reason the company decided to go nuclear a few weeks ago and boost the cost of existing pre-orders by as much as 20 percent in some cases. The company later backtracked on this, but it was after most of the pre-order owners walked away from the company.

However, 2022 has been a much better year for the company since it’s apparently worked out some of its production kinks. So far its made over 2,400 deliveries with a goal of 25,000 by the end of the year. Still, that’s not going to make a huge dent in the 83,000 pre-orders the company has received.

The 25,000 vehicles the company plans to make this year also includes Amazon delivery vans. It’s unclear how many R1T trucks will actually be produced. Amazon, a substantial investor in Rivian, has ordered 100,000 delivery vans by 2030. There were originally plans to get 10,000 electric delivery vans on the road by the end of 2022.

Rivian says that if supply chain issues weren’t an issue, it would be able to make 50,000 trucks in a year.

Source: The Verge

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Rivian IPOs with $100 billion valuation, beats all automakers except Tesla

The hot new tech stock this week is electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian.

The upstart automaker hasn’t even mass-produced a vehicle yet, but it’s already worth more than every other car company you’ve ever heard of except for one, Tesla.

Not only did Rivian surpass other automakers, it’s also the biggest IPO this year with a valuation of over $100 billion USD (roughly $125 billion CAD). CBC News also reports that this is the biggest IPO in the U.S. since FaceBook in 2012.

While this is a crazy valuation for a company, it does show how much people are excited about EVs. Rivian has only had a few hundred with plans to hit 1,000 by the end of the year between its R1T pickup truck and R1S crossover. The company is also building electric delivery vehicles for Amazon and works moderately closely with Ford.

While  Rivian is seemingly overvalued right now, it’s worth considering that its competitor, Tesla, is worth over $1 trillion, so there’s a possibility it could also surge in value if it scales appropriately over the next few years.

Source: CBC News