Author: Chang Yan

I never imagined that the days of 2022 would end up like this.

Especially recently, I have increasingly harbored the idea of owning a pickup truck.

When hoarding things, it can hold everything; when going out, it can pass any road.

As for the previously worried congested road conditions, at least they do not exist in Beijing now.

Americans obviously have a better understanding of this car usage feeling. This is the main reason why a bunch of new and old brands have chosen to start with pickups. It is also the long-term optimism of everyone for brands like Rivian which has launched pure electric pickup delivery first.

However, at least from the stock price perspective, the market’s confidence in Rivian is slightly shaken. Let’s take a simple look at what they are doing through the Q1 financial report just released by Rivian.

Production capacity is the core

I have always felt that the reason why new forces in the United States have great style is because they have really extended their design capabilities to all media that can interact with people.

If you don’t believe it, you can download this quarter’s financial report files of Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian to take a look. You will definitely come back to give a thumbs up to the previous sentence.

The first page of Rivian’s financial report this time is a scene of a column of R1T pickups coming off the production line, and Cybertruck users next door are crying for it, and many people have turned it into a Tesla look… off-topic…

This shows that all enterprises are pursuing the improvement of production capacity and delivery, because scale is the lifeline.

In the entire quarter, Rivian’s revenue was 95 million U.S. dollars, and the net loss was 1.6 billion U.S. dollars.

Among them, 2,553 cars were produced, and 1,227 were delivered. The reason for such a big difference between delivery and production is not because no one is buying it. On the contrary, Rivian stated that they only have 90,000 R1T orders and 10,000 R1S orders in the United States and Canada. In addition to these 100,000 vehicles, they also have orders for 100,000 electric logistics vehicles from Amazon.Compared to the data of 909 cars delivered in the previous quarter, the delivery performance of this quarter is indeed not worth praising. However, Rivian still achieved the historical milestone of delivering the first 5,000 vehicles and carried out the first large-scale software OTA update in this quarter.

Originally I thought that Rivian would take advantage of the momentum of achieving the first 5,000 vehicles milestone to announce some big moves, but it turned out that Rivian clearly stated that their production target for this year is still 25,000 vehicles. This not only means that more consumers will have to wait until next year for their cars, but also causes anxiety about whether Rivian can meet its development goals as scheduled. After all, when Rivian adjusted its annual production target from 50,000 to 25,000, the stock price already experienced a significant drop.

In the financial report, Rivian also stated that they don’t want to bear this responsibility themselves, “Since March 31, 2022, we have been forced to shut down production for a longer period than expected, resulting in about a quarter of planned production time lost due to supplier constraints.”

The Goal is 10% Global Market Share

Although the performance is conservative, Rivian’s ambition is huge. Their goal is to achieve 10% market share, not just in the pickup truck and not just in the United States, but in the global auto market.

Even if we consider it as a dream of a fool, it is not enough to achieve it with just a few guns. Therefore, Rivian has a plan to recruit more talents to fight for this target. On the one hand, to reduce the price, the dual-motor version of the Rivian R1T will be delivered soon (currently it is four-motor), the EDV logistics vehicle will also launch a single-motor version, and they will introduce lithium iron phosphate batteries across its entire product lineup.

However, it should be added that these measures will not result in significant price reductions, only preventing price increases. Also, due to being scared by the supply chain price increase last time, Rivian has also developed a new order system today that does not lock in the price until the delivery, which could indeed be a small smart maneuver.On the other hand, Rivian announced that from 2025, it will start producing the R2 series models in a new factory. R2 will adopt a smaller vehicle platform to create a “more affordable mid-size SUV for the global market” and undertake the task of achieving high sales volume. It can be said that Rivian’s version of the Model Y will be born.

This new factory is the second factory located in Georgia, which is expected to break ground this summer. The factory is expected to invest $5 billion and has already received the state’s largest package of incentives of $1.5 billion in history.

At the same time, Rivian stated that its top priority is to increase production capacity at its first factory in Illinois and plans to introduce a second shift there this summer. Its two factories combined are expected to have an annual production capacity of 600,000 vehicles.

The disparity in production and sales ratios has determined that Rivian must do everything possible to establish a solid foundation for car sales.

In this quarter, Rivian’s destination charging stations installed in many national parks have begun operation, which will help Rivian users to be more willing to travel and go off-road with pure electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Rivian is also intensively testing its autonomous driving technology, and the test vehicles equipped with lidar have been frequently spotted.

Of course, Rivian still has its charm. After the financial report was released, Rivian’s stock price rose by 7%.

In fact, just by looking at this picture of the service vehicle, one can tell that only this type of new-wave pickup truck can provide such a fully armed multi-functional vehicle feel.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.