Amazon and GM in talks to invest in electric pickup truck maker Rivian: sources

[Cmicasa the Great]

 

Quote

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc and General Motors Co are in talks to invest in Rivian Automotive LLC in a deal that would value the U.S. electric pickup truck manufacturer at between $1 billion and $2 billion, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

@dfelt @ocnblu

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rivian-electric-amazon-com-gm-exclusi/exclusive-amazon-gm-in-talks-to-invest-in-electric-pickup-truck-maker-rivian-sources-idUSKCN1Q12PV?il=0

[ykX]

Wow, I guess Rivian is more ready for production then I thought.  Good to get more players in the field, shame though that GM is investing instead of developing technology.

Now waiting for @dfelt and @ocnblu to get into this thread

Edited February 13, 2019 by ykX

[oldshurst442]

1 hour ago, ykX said:

Wow, I guess Rivian is more ready for production then I thought.  Good to get more players in the field, shame though that GM is investing instead of developing technology.

Now waiting for @dfelt and @ocnblu to get into this thread

I dont mind GM just investing on this.

It takes literally billions of dollars to invest in new tech. Hell, it takes billions to invest in new platforms revolving old tech...

This way, somebody else does the R&D, the development and the time to engineer while you just help out with a fraction of the cost with investment and reap the benefits anyway. GM has and will continue to engineer their own EV tech, this way, they get to see what another company's vision will be as well and GM could improve upon their own tech going forward.

Best of both world's.

GM will be improving upon their own EV tech with only their own engineers. 

GM will see how another company does things with EV tech.  Outside of their own engineering.

Learn from both and improve the tech even further going forward. 

Edited February 13, 2019 by oldshurst442

[G. David Felt]

1 hour ago, ykX said:

Wow, I guess Rivian is more ready for production then I thought.  Good to get more players in the field, shame though that GM is investing instead of developing technology.

Now waiting for @dfelt and @ocnblu to get into this thread

Great that GM is investing. CJ the CEO of Rivian is a very smart man and with such a solid skateboard concept, why reinvent the wheel when you can buy it and offer it as a Sierra or Silverado 1/2 ton pickup. Saves time and money getting into the market. 

GM will keep me as a customer if they take this and offer a full size SUV / Pickup truck EV.

Smart thinking by Mary to jump over the competition and get started on the EV trucks / SUV segment.

47 minutes ago, oldshurst442 said:

I dont mind GM just investing on this.

It takes literally billions of dollars to invest in new tech. Hell, it takes billions to invest in new platforms revolving old tech...

This way, somebody else does the R&D, the development and the time to engineer while you just help out with a fraction of the cost with investment and reap the benefits anyway. GM has and will continue to engineer their own EV tech, this way, they get to see what another company's vision will be as well and GM could improve upon their own tech going forward.

Best of both world's.

GM will be improving upon their own EV tech with only their own engineers. 

GM will see how another company does things with EV tech.  Outside of their own engineering.

Learn from both and improve the tech even further going forward. 

Agree, GM's BEV3 platform will offer some exciting mid size and compact size EVs. This investment allows GM to get access to a FULL Size SUV/Truck platform they can then run with and offer in the market sooner hopefully.

[riviera74]

I am unsurprised that Amazon is investing in Rivian.  Good for them.

As for GM, this is a great idea.  Invest in the potential competition and all.

[A Horse With No Name]

1 hour ago, riviera74 said:

I am unsurprised that Amazon is investing in Rivian.  Good for them.

As for GM, this is a great idea.  Invest in the potential competition and all.

And it is a fantastic sign real change is coming.

 

[oldshurst442]

24 minutes ago, A Horse With No Name said:

And it is a fantastic sign real change is coming.

 

Whether real or imagined, for better or for worse...

EVs are gonna be the way of our transportation lives. 

And I think, when FoMoCo, GM, VAG (Porsche, VW, Audi), Volvo, BMW, M-B, Chinese automotive companies, the folk that own Jaguar, all the EV start-ups such as Tesla, Rivian, and quite possibly the ones that are vapour ware like Faraday...when all these companies are putting all their engineering might and when most governments are willing participants...the EV future is gonna be a go!

All the problems, big or small, all the hiccups, big or small, all the mistakes and obstacles that the EVs WILL face in the NEAR and FAR future, well, all those companies and government entities WILL PROBABLY SOLVE those problems going forward. 

Cost?

It wont be a problem when the whole system will work TOGETHER to fight cost...

Because as I see it now...the EV thing is not just a consumer option that may or may not succeed in the "real world"...it really is a global way of thought...

The planet wants to move away from the internal combustion engine...whether we ICE folk want it or not. Whether we want to believe that or not. 

The whole ICE, oil and gasoline system (for personal transportation cars) is slowly but surely being replaced by everybody involved in the production of the automobile...

Big oil will have to adapt to that. Our roads and infrastructure and we, ourselves, we'll have to adapt to that. But like I said...FoMoCo, GM, VAG (Porsche, VW, Audi), Volvo, BMW, M-B, Chinese automotive companies, the folk that own Jaguar, all the EV start-ups such as Tesla, Rivian, and quite possibly the ones that are vapour ware like Faraday.. all these companies are putting all their engineering might and most governments are willing participants to move ahead in an EV future...

Ive said this before, it is not a question of the consumer accepting the EV...its the whole planet wanting to move away from ICE.

Some places on this planet will resist, like in Texas or Alberta or Lancaster Pennsylvania. And they WILL put up a good fight too. But ultimately, they will succumb to the EV as its a GLOBAL change...

Edited February 13, 2019 by oldshurst442

[balthazar]

Cost? It wont be a problem when the whole system will work TOGETHER to fight cost...

Have you seen ANY evidence of that to date? Why is the Jag i-pace $70K and the audi e-tron $75K and the Rivian truck $69K, etc etc.
If Tesla can charge $85K -$97K, what is the motivation for any other manufacturer to come in at $25-30K? 'cause I'm not seeing it yet.

[Suaviloquent]

Remember when Daimler and Toyota put money into Tesla? 

 

YUP. I think GM will just get disgruntled. Maybe they're looking to do a stock swap,but then Rivian would be getting a FAR better deal than what GM would get in return.

[A Horse With No Name]

6 minutes ago, Suaviloquent said:

Remember when Daimler and Toyota put money into Tesla? 

 

YUP. I think GM will just get disgruntled. Maybe they're looking to do a stock swap,but then Rivian would be getting a FAR better deal than what GM would get in return.

Would not be the first time that GM stepped on to an upturned rake, figuratively speaking.

[Cmicasa the Great]

If Rivian has property rights and technologies that are worth buying into why wouldn't GM want to get its hands on that too? Especially if the cost is cheap. Its also possible the GM simply wants to buy into it so it can, oust the owners, force them to cease any other collaborations, trash part of the tech, effectively killing a potential competitor to their own EV or Gas/Diesel Trucks. Its certainly not unheard of.. and God knows GM and Ford used to do it back in the Sloan years to help consolidate the industry for a time.

[oldshurst442]

1 hour ago, balthazar said:

 

Have you seen ANY evidence of that to date? Why is the Jag i-pace $70K and the audi e-tron $75K and the Rivian truck $69K, etc etc.
If Tesla can charge $85K -$97K, what is the motivation for any other manufacturer to come in at $25-30K? 'cause I'm not seeing it yet.

You are not seeing it yet?

Sure...as of now...all you are seeing is high costs...

That is the short term blindness we all are looking at...

When the tech, infrastructure and all that is set into place 10-20-30 years from now, all that what you are seeing now will be water under a bridge...

FoMoCo, GM, VAG (Porsche, VW, Audi), Volvo, BMW, M-B, Chinese automotive companies, the folk that own Jaguar, all the EV start-ups such as Tesla, Rivian, and quite possibly the ones that are vapour ware like Faraday.. all these companies are putting all their engineering might and most governments are willing participants to move ahead in an EV future...

I feel this is going to go like it did with high definition broadcasting and TVs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television_in_the_United_States

 

Quote

 

From proposals to introduction[edit]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began soliciting proposals for a new television standard for the U.S. in the late 1980s and later decided to ask companies competing to create the standard to pool their resources and work together, forming what was known as the Grand Alliance in 1993.

On July 23, 1996, WRAL-TV (then the CBS affiliate in Raleigh, North Carolina; now affiliated with NBC) became the first television station in the United States to broadcast a digital television signal.^[2]

HDTV sets became available in the U.S. in 1998 and broadcasts began around November 1998. The first public HDTV broadcast was of the launch of the space shuttle Discoveryand John Glenn's return to space; that broadcast was made possible in part by the Harris Corporation.^[3] The first commercial broadcast of a local sporting event in HD was during Major League Baseball's Opening Day on March 31, 1998, the Texas Rangers against the Chicago White Sox from The Ballpark in Arlington in Arlington, TX. The telecast was produced by LIN Productions, and overseen by LIN Productions president and Texas Rangers television executive producer Lee Spieckerman. The game was also the inaugural telecast on the digital channel of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas NBC affiliate KXAS channel 5. The historic event was simultaneously shown via satellite at a reception attended by members of congress, the FCC and other luminaries in Washington, DC. This telecast was also the first commercial HD broadcast in the state of Texas.^[4] The first major sporting event broadcast nationwide in HD was Super Bowl XXXIV on January 30, 2000. By the 2014–15 season every network show producing new episodes had transitioned to high definition

 

.

It took time for everybody to adapt...cost was huuuuuge for everybody.

TVs, cameras, satellites to broadcast HD meaning launching these things into space...

Yet we are here...

Do we think about how expensive all that was?

How long it took?

How expensive those 1st plasma TVs were and how short of a viewing lifespan they had because they kept burning out...

How, with the exemption of very few programming and very few movies were ever made in HD and the expensive cost to buy HD TVs?   Even DVDs were not HD then..

I bet we dont think about that at all...and yet its not even 20 years that HD was available let alone fully available with everything and every media...yet we take HD for granted today...yet we do NOT realize how expensive that change was nor do we think about WHO FIT THAT BILL?

Because...who really fit that bill?

Because...as a consumer...did you really have the option to buy are CRT television after 2004?

You could deny the change is ever happening, which is fine...but its happening.

 

[balthazar]

A bill one cannot afford is not "short term blindness".

Televisions are a poor analogy- the first commercial TV set was $1300, in 1954. That's $13,000 today. TVs have been coming down in price since Day 1. Most consumer electric/electronics do, but motor vehicles have only gone the OTHER way. You could've bought yourself a brand new Crosley in '54 for $1000.

Since the Leaf's $29K in 2013, every other EV intro'd or unveiled since has been MORE money.

Edited February 13, 2019 by balthazar

[oldshurst442]

Just now, balthazar said:

A bill one cannot afford is not "short term blindness".

You seem to be forgetting that GOVERNMENTS WORLD WIDE are BANNING the internal combuston engine...

GOVERNMENTS that DICTATE to their people what to buy..

CHINA seems to come to mind here..I could think of 1 billion reasons of how economies of scale could reduce the cost EVs...

I could also think how the Chinese government could also subsidize the industry further with monetaty incentives...

Then there is Europe doing the same thing...

Tesla is ALREADY doing their part as they have built and continue to expand their charginh infrasctructure...and the Chinese government has subsidized Tesla's factory in China and then their was a time when France offered to do the same for Tesla...

And last I saw...FoMoCo and VAG will  build commercial trucks and vans together...and maybe EVs..

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/15/business/ford-volkswagen/index.html

 

 

Quote

 

New York (CNN Business)Ford and Volkswagen announced a long-anticipated plan Tuesday to build vehicles together.

The automakers said they have signed an agreement to develop commercial vans and medium-sized pickups beginning as early as 2022.

The companies also agreed to "investigate" how they can work together to develop next generation vehicles, such as electric and self-driving cars.

Both companies also said they were open to considering additional vehicle programs in the future.

 

 

 

Why Ford and Volkswagen will get together - but not get married

 

The auto industry is racing to develop new technologies and vehicles. Companies are looking for ways to free up billions of dollars to spend on development.

Ford has said it anticipates spending $11 billion restructuring its business in the coming years, while VW has announced that it will spend €44 billion ($50 billion) by 2023 on an "electric offensive" to develop electric cars, self-driving vehicles and other new technology.

"You can't do this alone," said Ford CEO Jim Hackett at a joint appearance Tuesday. "All these efforts will be enhanced by sharing brainpower."

 

"It is no secret that our industry is undergoing fundamental change, resulting from widespread electrification, ever stricter emission regulation, digitization, the shift towards autonomous driving, and not least changing customer preferences," said Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess. "In such an environment, it just makes sense to share investment, pool innovation capabilities and create scale effects in clearly defined areas."

 

 

[ocnblu]

The only thing I've seen so far on this thing is CGI.  And BS.

Edited February 13, 2019 by ocnblu

[oldshurst442]

21 minutes ago, ocnblu said:

The only thing I've seen so far on this thing is CGI.  And BS.

And General Motors money...to make it into a reality...

[riviera74]

41 minutes ago, ocnblu said:

The only thing I've seen so far on this thing is CGI.  And BS.

I suspect a lot of people will be buying EVs within about 15 years.  What will you say then?

[ocnblu]

30 minutes ago, riviera74 said:

I suspect a lot of people will be buying EVs within about 15 years.  What will you say then?

Well I'll prolly be on a different tack by then.

[balthazar]

You seem to be forgetting that GOVERNMENTS WORLD WIDE are BANNING the internal combuston engine...

What ban has been enacted, where?

[oldshurst442]

Nothing concrete yet. 

Diesel fuel is 100% sure though.  

But, like I said with the HD broadcasting thingy.  It will take a collaboration of everybody to make this a reality. 

You and I do NOT know what kinds of talks are happening BEHIND the scenes to facilitate such a move, between everybody involved... to ban ICE. And yes...automotive CEOs DO talk to world leaders for such things...

Speculation is all I got. But speculation that this is not gonna happen is all you got too...

But because there is soooooo much talk about EVs and bans and stuff, it looks like Im closer in my speculations than you are.  

All you got is plans change.

I got proof of those plans being in effect and par for the course. Until further notice, But that hasnt happened....yet...but we dont know if that will ever happen, that the EV plan will be reversed...

 

Edited February 14, 2019 by oldshurst442

[balthazar]

"Speculation is all I got".

 

Thank you.

[oldshurst442]

Just now, balthazar said:

"Speculation is all I got".

 

Thank you.

Well...I got the same speculation on the opposite side of the fence...

That was not meant for a victory parade for you. Nor for me. 

But was just a way for me to tell you that you aint right. You aint wrong, But you aint right. 

We have reached an impasse regarding our debate. Which is good. But that impasse does NOT mean that EVs are NOT gonna be our future...

Those plans for EVs going forward are par for the course as we speak. 

Especially when many OEMs are spending billions on this. 

 

[G. David Felt]

ICE auto sales are funding the future autos that will more than likely be EVs due to multiple reasons all of which will be debated one side or another.

Fact is that just as we have lovers and haters of various leadership around the world from Government to Business, you have 6.5 Billion people of which some will follow one track and others another.

End result is that Governments will tax, you will pay taxes and technology will always change.

Change is inevitable, most will adopt and change some will stay in their track till the day they die.

At least we will all still debate both sides of this Fence.

My antique auto's will be SUV's and trucks compared to others here that will have cars, but both are a means to a road trip through life of enjoying your personal freedom machine and on that point we all should be in agreement that the right to drive is a privilege earned and should not go away.