https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/25/24185946/vw-rivian-joint-venture-investment-software-r2
A big cash infusion for the EV startup.
90% sure I saw this guy at a Margaritaville in Palm Springs. Looked exactly like him, had a lanyard and had some sort of assistant walking with him.
Volkswagens EV platform is a mess because the CEO responsible for the pivot to EV within VW, was only allowed to implement it if he stopped being the CEO. So the next guy half assed the 80B$ pivot to EV, leading to VW being one of the worst performers amongst EV producing OEMs.
So now they are on the market to buy whatever is needed to get them out of the hot mess they created themselves.
VW is good at making cars, but bad at software. They've had to delay the introduction of new models (Golf, ID.3) because of software issues. Rivian has sort of the opposite problem: their production lines sit still often because of problems in the supply chain.
Volkswagen has the expertise to solve Rivian's production and supplier problems, and the cash they will need to survive and develop some cheaper models (the EV market is stagnating right now for a lack of budget options, and Rivian only sells trucks and SUVs). And they're hoping Rivian software engineers can help them fix their software woes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The joint venture will be co-owned by Rivian and VW Group, which oversees brands like Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, and its flagship Volkswagen.
The new venture was announced in a post from Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, who noted the investment will help the company bring its next generation R2 electric vehicle to market starting in 2026.
VW Group CEO Oliver Blume said all of the company’s brands could benefit from the partnership with Rivian, including potential competitor Scout Motors, which is planning to launch a new lineup of electric trucks in the US.
The plan was to use Rivian’s battery pack and electric motor setup in a Ford or Lincoln branded SUV.
Asked whether the deal would make Rivian the exclusive partner to VW and its brands, Scaringe declined to answer directly.
“In the context of the joint venture, we have certainly talked about the ability to work on other products or private programs outside of the Rivian or Volkswagen Group portfolio,” he said.
The original article contains 645 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I think this is fucking awesome. Complete win for all of us hoping for better and more affordable EVs.
I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)
For what it's worth, all automakers had illegally high emissions (well apart from Tesla I guess). This is something I never see people bring up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
VW wasn't even close to being the worst for it (surprisingly they were among the least bad). They were just the first to be tested, and their leadership owned up to breaking the law immediately, meaning news media could happily call them out without fear of a libel/slander case.
VW alone took the PR hit for an entire shady industry.
I mean they also own like half the industry. So, I don't feel particularly bad for them to be honest.
Well yeah I don't feel bad for any big company when bad stuff happens to them (well, within reason, I obviously don't want massive layoffs and people left unemployed).
My point isn't to be an apologist for VW, my point is that the others are just as bad, and plenty are even worse, yet they got away with it. They shouldn't have.
Don't worry, I don't think you are. I just think there's a reason they admitted so easily. Probably just another calculated fallout to save all their other brands from their own mini backlash which would ultimately cause more damage.
But yes, the whole industry is a dumpster fire when it comes to regulations and also lobbying.
I wasn’t actually so mad at first. They bought back our smaller cheaper car and we felt very compensated. But for the second car, which was much bigger and more expensive, they only offered a “fix” which they said wouldn’t affect performance (yeah right), and a small amount in restitution. It felt like a slap in the face. In hindsight I would have gone about things differently but let’s just say that I have little to no faith in the way our justice system works anymore due to how we decided to proceed after that, and we will never buy a car from VW ever again.
Meanwhile, we actually replaced those cars with Teslas. And now we feel like we’re kind of back in the same place, having given money to a company that is pretty shit. We try to vote with our wallets as much as possible but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s just really depressing and disheartening and makes me not want to buy anything anymore.
Rivian comes off as a tech bro startup that has talked a big game but produced poor results, they've been advertising autonomous self driving since like 2015 or earlier. After shipments started, so did layoffs.
VW has a long history of reliable manufacturing to high standards in Europe. They've had executives make claims that they would overtake Tesla as the world's largest electric car company by 2025. Obviously, VW has been lagging hard on EV and won't reach that goal, but if I had to pick a favorite car company it's between them and maybe JEEP or KIA.
I could forgive VW if they actually did something to rectify the bullshit they pulled. Instead, the EV charging network they were forced to build out, Electrify America, is absolutely the worst of the bunch and frequently has at least a third of the chargers not operational. If I had to pick least favorite car companies, it would be between them and Hyundai/Kia. Hyundai/Kia would probably take it because they were the only brand who was dumb enough to not have immobilizer in their cars which has led to high theft and the other bigger reason would be them frequently being caught using child labor.
Don't know what people expected from a company being forced to build the infrastructure against their will, they should have had to pay a fine and a State corporation should have been created from that to create charging infrastructure and reap the profit for the government's coffers.
Not only that, but they had to create a company/infrastructure that they had little to no expertise in.
I guarantee if you asked someone in 2015 "of all the companies out there, who do you think has the knowledge and expertise in civil engineering, US planning law, electricity infrastructure, and wireless communications required to build out a US-wide charging network?", very few would have come back with "VW would be great at that!"
I can definitely see the logic in it - it pressured VW to pivot to EV platforms, which I guess was the goal. But expecting them to be able to properly run a completely different business to what they have expertise in was always going to have problems.
You aren't wrong, but also it directly impacts the company reputation. Doing it as absolute crap as they did hurts them. Not the whole industry, because looks what's happened since, the charging standards in USA went from CCS to nacs, all the manufacturers switched to using Tesla network which, checks notes is your direct competition.
I think very few people realize that it's VW that built that infrastructure and the fact that major governments didn't come together to set a charging standard is a separate issue.
Which to me is also a failure. Everyone knows the Tesla network is Tesla. And it's hands down, better. People use Electrify America and have a bad experience (myself included) and they get mad at it. Even if they don't know it's tied to vw.
YouTubers and journalist talk about it and tie it to vw and suddenly your enthusiasts are panning vw for their garbage network.
It's a lose lose for Volkswagen the way they did this.
