Amazon Orders 100,000 Vans From Rivian

[Drew Dowdell]

Back in February, Amazon helped Rivian by investing $700 million into the company. Now Amazon is helping further with one first big order.  Amazon is ordering 100,000 vans to be delivered by 2024. The first deliveries should start in 2021 and prototypes will likely be seen next year.  At that rate of production, Rivian would immediately start outselling the Nissan NV and NV200 combined.  The van is exclusive to the Amazon partnership and Rivian says it will not delay any of the R1T or R1S deliveries as it is being built on a separate assembly line at the Normal IL. facility. 

Rivian used a skateboard chassis for their R1T and R1S, so building a van body (R1V?) over top of the skateboard shouldn't be too hard of a task. The R1T has a claimed range of up to 400 miles on a single charge and being capable of getting to an 80 percent charge inside of an hour. 

Amazon's use for the vans is clear. They have committed to reaching the goals of the United Nations Paris Agreement 10 years early with 80% of their energy use being renewable by 2024 and 100% by 2030. 

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[USA-1]

Before Rivian is really even established? Will the Normal, IL plant have enough capacity? Maybe Ford will lease them an old car plant since their cars are all gone or on the way out. Part of new agreement between them maybe? Electric truck for a manf. plant.   

Edited September 19, 2019 by USA-1 Vortec 6.2

[riviera74]

10 minutes ago, USA-1 Vortec 6.2 said:

Before Rivian is really even established? Will the Normal, IL plant have enough capacity? Maybe Ford will lease them an old car plant since their cars are all gone or on the way out. Part of new agreement between them maybe? Electric truck for a manf. plant.   

OR GM could simply sell the Lordstown plant and let Rivian reorganize it to meet their needs?

[USA-1]

1 minute ago, riviera74 said:

OR GM could simply sell the Lordstown plant and let Rivian reorganize it to meet their needs?

Sounds like GM has plans for their own dedicated EV plant or possible battery plant with Lordstown since the deal with Workhorse fell through or was never really close. 

[Drew Dowdell]

1 hour ago, USA-1 Vortec 6.2 said:

Before Rivian is really even established? Will the Normal, IL plant have enough capacity? Maybe Ford will lease them an old car plant since their cars are all gone or on the way out. Part of new agreement between them maybe? Electric truck for a manf. plant.   

It's about 33,000 vans a year. The plant can handle a lot more than that.  It use to build Eclipse, Galant, Sebring Coupe, and others.  At it's height it was producing 222k vehicles a year.  So they should be good there with two production lines running at 33k a year. 

1 hour ago, USA-1 Vortec 6.2 said:

Sounds like GM has plans for their own dedicated EV plant or possible battery plant with Lordstown since the deal with Workhorse fell through or was never really close. 

Workhorse made like 8 cents last quarter... they were never going to be able to buy Lordstown.  Lordstown would just be a battery plant. Detroit-Hamtramck would be where the EVs were built.

[balthazar]

Its much more about corporate ability / efficiency than it is about plant physical capacity. We can’t talk about Rivian’s production rate like it’s GM or [any other] established OEM.

[G. David Felt]

17 hours ago, USA-1 Vortec 6.2 said:

Before Rivian is really even established? Will the Normal, IL plant have enough capacity? Maybe Ford will lease them an old car plant since their cars are all gone or on the way out. Part of new agreement between them maybe? Electric truck for a manf. plant.   

The Normal IL plant at it's highest capacity produced 200,000 plus auto's a year on two assembly lines with two shifts, had a total capacity for over 300,000 auto's. 

Yes Rivian will produce the Ford F150 along with their R1T and R1S and now on the second assembly line the R1V which makes sense that Drew pointed out in the article above.

I see no need for them to go anywhere else at this time. CJ is not following Crazy Musk play book of inventing everything from scratch and is using what the current auto companies have proven works in producing Pickup Trucks every 37 seconds according to info supplied by Ford and GM.

I actually expect Rivian once they are in full production mode to build a superior product than Tesla and move quickly.

Excited to see these vans on the streets quietly making deliveries.

14 hours ago, balthazar said:

Its much more about corporate ability / efficiency than it is about plant physical capacity. We can’t talk about Rivian’s production rate like it’s GM or [any other] established OEM.

Yet we can look to the past and with the stated fact that CJ is on record of stating he is going to use what the current auto industry OEMs have proven works for assembly work. So with a plant that if at full capacity, 3 shifts can produce 300,000 or more auto's, then they should have no problem with their commitment to the van, their own auto's and the Ford F150 EV.

[balthazar]

Of course, he's the corporate mouthpiece, drumming up investors (I assume; I have no idea who 'CJ' is). Of course he's going to say 'full scale production, snap-snap!'. Such remains to be seen. Again; corporate ability / efficiency is what gets product produced, not statements to the press.

[Robert Hall]

14 hours ago, balthazar said:

Of course, he's the corporate mouthpiece, drumming up investors (I assume; I have no idea who 'CJ' is).  

Robert 'RJ' Scaringe, Rivian founder.

Edited September 21, 2019 by Robert Hall

[G. David Felt]

On 9/20/2019 at 8:23 AM, dfelt said:

The Normal IL plant at it's highest capacity produced 200,000 plus auto's a year on two assembly lines with two shifts, had a total capacity for over 300,000 auto's. 

Yes Rivian will produce the Ford F150 along with their R1T and R1S and now on the second assembly line the R1V which makes sense that Drew pointed out in the article above.

I see no need for them to go anywhere else at this time. RJ is not following Crazy Musk play book of inventing everything from scratch and is using what the current auto companies have proven works in producing Pickup Trucks every 37 seconds according to info supplied by Ford and GM.

I actually expect Rivian once they are in full production mode to build a superior product than Tesla and move quickly.

Excited to see these vans on the streets quietly making deliveries.

Yet we can look to the past and with the stated fact that RJ is on record of stating he is going to use what the current auto industry OEMs have proven works for assembly work. So with a plant that if at full capacity, 3 shifts can produce 300,000 or more auto's, then they should have no problem with their commitment to the van, their own auto's and the Ford F150 EV.

CORRECTION, wrongly stated CJ was CEO, should have read RJ as it reads now.

 

[Drew Dowdell]

On 9/20/2019 at 10:07 PM, balthazar said:

Of course, he's the corporate mouthpiece, drumming up investors (I assume; I have no idea who 'CJ' is). Of course he's going to say 'full scale production, snap-snap!'. Such remains to be seen. Again; corporate ability / efficiency is what gets product produced, not statements to the press.

Well he keeps getting big investments from big companies, so they must see something positive there.  I don't recall Tesla getting the same kind of investment funding.