There’s a lot of news surrounding Rivian right now. The start-up electric vehicle company debut two concepts at the Los Angeles Auto Show last year—the R1S crossover and R1T truck. The elegant design and stout specs turned heads. There, the company said it wanted to bring production versions of both vehicles to market for the 2020 model year. The company then disappeared from the news cycle until earlier this month when rumors circulated General Motors and Amazon were both looking to invest in the company. While Amazon is leading an investment round of $700 million, a GM and Rivian partnership has yet to surface — and the delay may be for legitimate reasons.Â
Richard Truett at Automotive News wrote a piece that highlights several reasons why a GM and Rivian tie up would not be a good thing. Or, at a minimum send the wrong message. Right now, as Truett points out, the automaker is going through a substantial restructuring, laying off workers and closing plants. Investing millions of dollars into another company is kind of an insult to GM’s own engineers, designers, and factory workers.Â
“It tells them in part that GM’s management values the work of another company more than that of its own employees,” Truett writes.
Truett suggests taking the money needed for a GM and Rivian partnership and putting it back into the automaker itself. He suggested improving dealership services, marketing its innovative technologies, or infusing Cadillac with cash—which could make sense considering GM announced last month Cadillac would lead the company’s electrification efforts with an all-new electric crossover that’d ride on an all-new scalable EV architecture.Â
On the other hand, General Motors could take a multi-pronged approach to future electric vehicles. The company could invest in Rivian, riding on the success of a sleek, attractive tech start-up that’s similar to Tesla while tasking its engineers to design an electrified Chevrolet Silverado competitor for the already-in-development electric Ford F-150.Â
During its 2018 earnings call earlier this month, GM CEO Mary Barra said, “We believe in an all EV future so you’ll have to stay tuned.” It was the perfect non-answer about what GM has planned for its future in regards to its electric vehicles. Trucks are a hot-ticket item right now, along with crossovers and SUVs of all sizes, and with Ford openly developing an electric F-150—the best-selling vehicle in the U.S.—the lack of GM equivalent seems odd. However, that doesn’t mean an electric truck isn’t in development.Â
GM has said it wants to release 20 new EVs by 2023 with that Cadillac EV spearheading the company’s electrified efforts. However, those vehicles will likely ride on GM’s scalable architecture that’s not conducive to meeting the needs of today’s truck buyers. That’s where GM and Rivian make more sense — the R1T truck has a claimed 11,000-pound towing capacity, a range of 400 miles, and a few neat features not currently available on mainstream pickup trucks. That said, Rivian hasn’t scaled or produced any salable examples of the R1T.
Investing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into a nascent EV company is risky for any company, and any investment in Rivian would be no different.Â
Comments
As far as investing in this company, Amazon has so much money that a full failure wouldn’t show up on the radar. GM on the other hand is and must be far more careful because too much debt in investments could hurt and the GM stock will rattle.
GM and Rivian partnership could help both companies. GM could get the licensing for the technology to put in the trucks and Rivian could get manufacturing expertise and capacity it may not have. As corporate logic might be is it must be a GM product in GM showrooms. With social media to expansive a rebadged Rivian won’t go over good.
The saddest thing about the Smollet case is how unhinged right-wing terrorists have made hate crimes so common that this hoax was easily believed by the people.
“Another fake hate crime!” – TheDotard
That’s one fake hate crime of thousands, ruskie. Tell vlad you need new talking points.
TheD, please put this on you Facebook or Twitter account, not here. I hope your post is removed.
You russian bots think anything not explicitly pleasuring trump’s microphallus is left wing.
Reality has a left-wing bias, “comrade”.
GM Needs to Invest in Rivian. Just do it. Way cooler than anything GM will ever design.
Yes! And GM will benefit from a broad array of narrowly focused brands as in Sloan’s time. The industry will be turned upside-down and a new exciting brand may prove a more effective solution that an EV Silverado especially among millennials and Gen Z, an import generation, neither of which cherish the memory of Chevy.
Trolls in the comments this morning….
The Rivian is awesome. I saw it at the LAAS and it was an absolute hit. It looks awesome and would be a great addition to GM.
It’s a big mistake if GM don’t partner/buyout Rivan
“It tells them in part that GM’s management values the work of another company more than that of its own employees,”
GM came out with ACC, lane centering, auto braking and even Supercruise on their own yet they still purchased Cruise Automation…
The employees mostly deal with ICE powertrains, the Spark EV and Bolt EV are not profitable and use a lot of South Korean workers and parts. A small minority of Bolt EVs have had battery issues and if you were one of the unlucky ones to encounter a battery issue, the car would showdown and leave you stranded…GM fixed that if you go in person to a dealership for a software update which prevents the car from shutting down, yet the battery can still be an issue and possibly needs a replacement…Investing into Rivian will most likely get a GM EV pickup on the road faster and cheaper than if GM tried to do it all themselves…
My question is if GM does buy Rivian out do they still have the $7,500 vehicle credit for the first 200k? I still think it would be a great investment opportunity since Amazon is already invested.
All the rumors have linked it to an investment vs a buyout…Rivian will most likely release a truck under their brand while GM while will release there own with the knowledge gained from the Rivian vehicles…
This is a GM story, not GMA…Learn the difference.
Unless they hold some secret technology that is so much more advanced than GM’s there is no reason to own them.
The styling is nothing special, the range is nothing GM could not duplicate. Is it they are just buying to remove another competitor?
There is no crying need for a EV pickup . The 400 mile range will not hold up under 11,000 mike towing.
I agree the GM tech center could do this work if they have not already.
If it goes production it will not be cheap and it will be more a Tesla S where people buy it more for image.
African Americans ARE commonly the victims of hate crimes hence why the media believed and ran with the story.
You live in an imaginary AM talk radio bubble that pretends racism is over while while dismissing institutional white privledge and the cycle of generational poverty many minorites get trapped in.
You not knowing or seeing this makes you part of the problem. You posting this on an auto blog proves you racist.
“The company could invest in Rivian, riding on the success of a sleek, attractive tech start-up that’s similar to Tesla while tasking its engineers to design an electrified Chevrolet Silverado competitor for the already-in-development electric Ford F-150. ”
1) what success? they haven’t sold one truck. they’ve garnered a lot of attention based on design and that design isn’t worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
2) how big is the market for a $70K+ EV truck?
3) so the author is suggesting gm pay twice for an EV truck. once to rivian and again to design their own?
if gm wants an EV truck, they should design/engineer it themselves. put that “synergy” MBA mumbo jumbo buzz word into action.
Truett suggests taking the money needed for a GM and Rivian partnership and putting it back into the automaker itself. He suggested improving dealership services,
WRONG! Let the manufacturer keep to the wholesale and allow dealers to keep to the retail end. Anybody who knows the retail end knows this. Dealers know how to take care if their customers better and the ones that don’t disappear. Capitalism at its best!!
“Dealers know how to take care if their customers better”
The only thing a dealer can do is get in the way of the consumer and what they want from the automaker. They have always been a needless, sponging, middle-man.