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Volkswagen to invest up to $5 billion in EV maker Rivian as part of tech joint venture (www.reuters.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I'd like to think that I have a reasonably decent understanding of economics for a laymen, but in this case I'm a bit stumped.

Seems to me that for 5 billion dollar (+however much VW spent on their own software) you should be able to develop a good operating system for your own cars. But I guess VW somehow failed and now would rather license Rivians through this joint venture?

Is a car OS really that expensive and complex to develop? Especially when android auto and Apple car play will do a lot of the heavy lifting for most people.

Even with losses of nearly $40,000 for every vehicle it delivers, Rivian has been on a steadier footing than other EV makers that have been forced to slash prices to stimulate demand or file for bankruptcy protection.

Rivian's cash and short-term investments fell by about $1.5 billion in the first quarter to just under $8 billion.

Nearly 40k loss per vehicle? That seems insane. How has that company been going on until now? They also say that they even before this deal they had enough reserves to last until their next models release and things were moving up, but still that is seems like an absurd rate to burn cash.

I get that it sometimes makes sense for companies to burn through heaps of cash to scaley capture market share or drive out competition, but is the car manufacturing market at this point in time one where this play still makes any sense?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

This answer depends heavily on the internal structure and politics around software development at Volkswagen. It could very well be an impossible task for Volkswagen to undertake such a huge development process without buying it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don’t think that includes things like the Amazon delivery vans that Rivian produces. Since they aren’t really sold in the same way.

I think that has been a big part of their revenue/investment so far.

From mid 2023:

On Tuesday evening, the company issued its second-quarter earnings report, which showed that gross loss per unit delivered between April 1 and June 30 came out to $32,595. That's an improvement over the first quarter's loss of $67,329 per delivered vehicle, and a huge gain over the same period a year ago, where per-unit losses were as high as $157,600.

Competitors in the EV space have been slashing prices this summer in an ongoing price war, but Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said on the company's earnings call Tuesday that Rivian wouldn't be following suit, citing "continued strong demand."

In fact, Rivian has increased its total production guidance for 2023 to 52,000 vehicles from 50,000.3 Last month, Rivian shares surged after beating out analyst expectations for second-quarter delivery numbers. In April, CFO Claire McDonough said the company would turn a profit in the final quarter of 2024.

For comparison, gross profit per delivered unit for the second quarter of 2023 sits at around $9,700 for Tesla Inc. (TSLA), a more mature EV company.5 For fellow EV up-and-comer Lucid Group Inc. (LCID), gross losses per unit came out to nearly $138,900 over the same period.

— https://www.investopedia.com/rivian-reduces-per-unit-losses-on-the-road-to-profitability-7574456

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Thanks for digging this up.

It would make sense if at least the vans would make some profit, otherwise it looks like madness (kinda still does to me) to spend this much money on getting into an industry that is actually imo not that attractive.

Even with the switch from combustion to EV, car manufacturing is still a capital intensive and low margin business. And they don't seem to go for the potential jackpot that is autonomous driving

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

iTS for the car architecture/platform as well, i think. From my understanding, ist rivian Kind of a Truck company?

So ist would fit purchasing an eTruck architecture and Software Stack.

Otherwise.. i would be completely at loss too...

I mean, in Germany, CARIAD ist basically a joke among Software engineers AND Automotive engineers...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

From my understanding, ist rivian Kind of a Truck company?

I think it's split between delivery vans and SUVs. Amazon has a stake in them aswell. I think at some point they owned like 20%? Not sure how much they currently hold.

Software has to be the main draw. I am not sure how interested they are in the delivery vans, and one has to think that they have enough SUVs themself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Well, Volkswagen AG has always been strong in commercial vehicles. Think about the First Taxi car in China (forgot That Name..), huge company car fleets in Europe, so small Delivery Trucks could.make Sense as well.

However, its probably Software, you are right