Ford, Lincoln Cancel Rivian-Powered Electric Vehicle (theverge.com) 64
Ford and its luxury brand Lincoln have canceled an all-electric SUV that was going to be powered by technology provided by EV startup Rivian, the companies told Automotive News on Tuesday. The Verge reports: Lincoln says it is still working closely with Rivian, including an "alternative vehicle" that will also be based on Rivian's electric vehicle skateboard platform. "Given the current environment, Lincoln and Rivian have decided not to pursue the development of a fully electric vehicle based on Rivian's skateboard platform. Our strategic commitment to Lincoln, Rivian and electrification remains unchanged and Lincoln's future plans will include an all-electric vehicle," a spokesperson from Lincoln told The Verge in a statement.
Lincoln declined to say what specifically about the pandemic led to the cancellation. "This was a decision that was mutually made by Lincoln and Rivian given the rapidly changing environment and after a review of product plans," the spokesperson said. "As we moved through the development cycle, we determined that it would be better to pivot from the Rivian's skateboard platform and focus our development efforts on Lincoln's own fully-electric vehicle." This is a pretty big blow, considering Ford invested $500 million in Rivian last year, just two months after Amazon led a $700 million investment in the Michigan-based startup.
CNBC reports that Ford "lost $632 million during the first quarter and warned investors that it expects an adjusted pretax loss of $5 billion during the second quarter as the company grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic that's shuttered factories and devastated sales."
Lincoln declined to say what specifically about the pandemic led to the cancellation. "This was a decision that was mutually made by Lincoln and Rivian given the rapidly changing environment and after a review of product plans," the spokesperson said. "As we moved through the development cycle, we determined that it would be better to pivot from the Rivian's skateboard platform and focus our development efforts on Lincoln's own fully-electric vehicle." This is a pretty big blow, considering Ford invested $500 million in Rivian last year, just two months after Amazon led a $700 million investment in the Michigan-based startup.
CNBC reports that Ford "lost $632 million during the first quarter and warned investors that it expects an adjusted pretax loss of $5 billion during the second quarter as the company grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic that's shuttered factories and devastated sales."
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, skateboards (Score:2)
Look up how Tesla's operational bits look without the car on top of it, it basically does look like a skateboard. The wheels, motors, battery, and much of the structural frame for supporting that stuff all amounts to a vehicle that looks a lot like a skateboard, as not much sticks up above the wheels. The battery is basically a flat thing centered on the vehicle below the centerline of the wheels. This is what gives their EVs such impressive stability.
https://www.teslarati.com/like... [teslarati.com]
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"The wheels, motors, battery, and much of the structural frame for supporting that stuff all amounts to a vehicle that looks a lot like a skateboard, as not much sticks up above the wheels."
This is the kind of thing that can only be said by people who have never seen a skateboard.
The so-called skateboard EV designs are nothing like skateboards. Not even slightly. Skateboards are completely on top of their axle assemblies, like a classic one ton pickup truck. EVs have wheels and suspension tacked on to the s
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The "skateboard" term was first used by rich old men who knew nothing about skateboards. And here you are, also knowing nothing about skateboards, repeating it.
Sad, so sad.
Or you know, it communicates that it is a largely flat featureless structure with 4 wheels. that doesn't resemble what most people consider a car and is closer to a skateboard. But they can then build a car shell on top with room to sit one or more pedants (like yourself)
The platform doesn't steer by lateral pressure/ yaw in axels or have rise in the nose or tail. But the metaphor is more than adequate to explain what they needed. And falls apart when you try to take it too far.
And incidentally the vertical
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You are incorrect (Score:2)
Given that I have indeed both seen and ridden on a skateboard(though I do suck at it), your statement is indeed false. Nothing like? as just another AC and jezwel showed, there are comparisons there.
Instead, you need to learn the difference between "like" and "exact". I didn't say that it looks exactly like a skateboard. I said that it looks "a lot like".
Compared to how a normal car looks without its shell, an EV like the Tesla compares much more like a skateboard than an ICE would.
it's sad, so sad, tha
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FTFA, "Rivian’s electric vehicle skateboard platform". Skateboards ?! Really ?!
What other name would you give this: https://www.wglt.org/sites/wgl... [wglt.org] a different name?
FYI that's a very standard looking electric car platform. On account of where the batteries need to be placed and the fact that they don't need a drive shaft they do actually look like skateboards.
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Ford was the only one of Detroit's Big 3 who didn't take TARP loans.
In the USA anyway. Ford happily accepted handouts all over the world while they were thumbing their nose at the handouts received by GM at home.
I guess they were better anyway. GM accepted a massive government bailout in Australia and then proceeded to close all manufacturing there. At least Ford is still there.
sourcing the lithium, copper, cobalt, rare earths (Score:2)
TO go mass market someone needs to answer how they source the raw materials. Yes it's true rare earths are in the US (and everywhere) but mining hasn't been economical except in china. Cobalt and copper are tied up in Africa and controlled by chinese investors. Lithium? most of it comes from Australia, chille, China, Argentina and Zimbabwe. Which again means control by Chinese investors.
US mass market Electric car makers are doomed if there's a trade war with China. Mom and pop operations like Tesla, a
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TO go mass market someone needs to answer how they source the raw materials. Yes it's true rare earths are in the US (and everywhere) but mining hasn't been economical except in china. Cobalt and copper are tied up in Africa and controlled by chinese investors. Lithium? most of it comes from Australia, chille, China, Argentina and Zimbabwe. Which again means control by Chinese investors.
US mass market Electric car makers are doomed if there's a trade war with China. Mom and pop operations like Tesla, and Rivian produce negligible qualntities of luxury cars so they don't need to worry right now. But they have a weak link in their supply chain they can't replace right now.
Someone is going to need to come up with a price competitive organic or iron or sulfur based battery (Flow batteries?) before makers in the US will have secure supply chains but by then China will have won the market through mass production. China is well poised to migrate to electric cars since they have growing coal and nuclear power, not to mention cheap solar, and some big Hydro regions as well. So they will be able to eat their own dog food to grow the industry.
This game of Go was lost a long time ago but it will take a lot of moves before anyone notices that they have eye-pieces in all the key points.
So the answer is to let China dominate the future car market?
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"China is well poised to migrate to electric cars since they have growing coal and nuclear power, not to mention cheap solar, and some big Hydro regions as well. So they will be able to eat their own dog food to grow the industry."
China is well-poised to choke on their own hubris because they're building so many coal plants. They already are suffering in a real and direct way due to their existing pollution. Granted, they're getting a break from that right now due to Covid, but I think that's going to work
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So what? It doesn't matter what the proportion is if they are still increasing coal use.
Oops (Score:1)
Oops, the Covid Rouge (and their fear-maddened imbecile apologists) crashed the world economy. Now there's not much effective demand for cars _or anything else_.
Current environment may not be Covid related (Score:4, Insightful)
My first thought is that it might not have much to do with the pandemic. Current environment can encompass much more than this.
Personally, I think I'd blame the oil price war that was flaring up before Covid-19 hit. Lower oil prices leads to lower gasoline prices, which means more customers buying gasoline vehicles than electric.
Covid crashing gasoline prices merely exasperates that.
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This, 1000x. it has nothing to do with pandemics.
- nobody is buying cars
- the economy is going to slow WAY DOWN if it doesn't reopen soon enough.
- gas prices are dropping and people only buy hybrids in bulk when gas is crashing into $5.00 / gal
Re:Current environment may not be Covid related (Score:4, Insightful)
Same for point number two.
Oil prices were dropping, but that pandemic thing made them fall even faster.
But sure, it has 'nothing to do with pandemics'.
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At least here in California, I'm not sure that car dealerships are open. They'll still do repairs, but I'm not sure you could go to a dealership and buy a car if you wanted to.
Of course, I haven't actually been to a car dealership so I might be wrong.
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Um why do you think no one is buying cars? Might there be a pandemic?
Not in Germany, they lifted restrictions allowing car dealers to re-open as essential services.
The funny thing is they pushed and pushed that the German economy depends on the ability to sell cars, and then proceeded to complain that no customers are coming.
https://www.automotivelogistic... [www.automo...tics.media]
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I think I'd blame the oil price war that was flaring up before Covid-19 hit. Lower oil prices leads to lower gasoline prices, which means more customers buying gasoline vehicles than electric.
This would be disastrously short-term thinking on the part of anyone involved in vehicle development.
The fossil fuel glut is temporary. Sooner or later the supply is going to bottom out and then the supply shortage relative to market demand will be worse than it ever was. That is not the time to start/re-start and EV development. That is when you want to be prepared to ship in volume. Because that is when the market is not going to want your ICE cars for sure.
On top of that, Telsa has also abundan
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This would be disastrously short-term thinking on the part of anyone involved in vehicle development.
It's Ford, the company that thought spending $1.35/vehicle to move a bolt that would puncture the Pinto's gas tank directly above the hot exhaust was too much to spend and killed hundreds of their customers, spent hundreds of millions in legal costs, and saw their market share collapse for almost a decade. I've seen no sign that they've learned anything since.
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Oil prices are only a temporary thing, in the long run electric is the future of transportation and many countries have already set and end date for fossil sales.
They probably just decided to make their own platform. It's not backing away from EVs, it's going all in to build their platform in-house rather than dipping their toe with a licence.
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I also can't help but wondering if sourcing parts from China is problematic for multiple reasons.
Handing the market over to CyberTruck (Score:3)
I really can'y see this as anything but a massive win fro Tesla, as they will have the entire market of people that want a heavy duty all electric vehicle to themselves for some time with the CyberTruck.
It's an even larger loss than it would first appear, because that's a lot of practical experience delivering and maintaining real world all-electric vehicles those companies are losing.
It could well be that by "current environment" they are factoring in not the virus alone, but the massive drop in the price of oil which has gas so cheap that even driving a gas Hummer these days wouldn't be that expensive.
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Agreed. Electric trucks kick gas trucks in the butt for all but a small section of the truck market (farmers).
Any idiot can see that, so GM and Ford know they'll be playing catchup later. This is definitely short-term thinking and yes, probably based on their personal parachute size.
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Given the likely longer longevity of electrical vehicles, this should lead to fewer volume sales over time. I believe that there simply put are too many car manufacturers out there.
Ignorance (Score:3)
GM just announced 10 new electric vehicles, and built a second battery plant. So I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about.
https://www.greentechmedia.com... [greentechmedia.com]
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Re:Handing the market over to CyberTruck (Score:5, Informative)
Rivian was planned for late 20, Tesla's 'truck' late 21, Tesla won't even be in the conversation for another year.
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Ford's move may push Rivian into Musk's camp, at which point they may license access to Tesla's supercharger system. We can hope, anyway.
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I would have considered a Rivian, except for the lack of charging infrastructure.
I dunno. Most of the chargers I've seen around aren't Tesla. Now, the advantage would be that you can use other chargers with a Tesla but you can't use a Tesla charger with other cars.
Still, from what I saw, there are plenty of CCS chargers here in the states...
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the advantage would be that you can use other chargers with a Tesla but you can't use a Tesla charger with other cars.
Tesla has not released a CSS adapter, and they discontinued their CHAdeMO adapter. So no, you can't use other chargers with a Tesla (at least not other fast chargers)
Where I live, the number of CSS locations has already surpassed the number of Supercharger stations on the highways, though admittedly there are fewer stalls at each, and about half are still the older 50kW versions. Still, the CSS stations are being built at many times the rate of new Superchargers, and the vehicles that can use them are not,
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I don't believe this is correct. You can buy a CHAdeMO adapter from tesla today that supports level 3 charging. [tesla.com]
By CSS I assume you actually mean CCS. You are correct that they don't have a CCS adapter. They do have a J1772 adapter [tesla.com] that fits the CCS charge connector though, but it's slow charging. In the UK The model 3 comes with a CCS connector, and you can refit it to an X or S for 425 pounds for models before May 2019 or
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Superchargers are not the only fast charging network. I don't know the situation in the US but in Europe there are plenty of rapid chargers, many of them faster than the Tesla ones. Rivian could feature faster charging than Tesla who max out at 250kW (and only for a few minutes), where as Porsche are already over 300kW.
Anyway, how many long trips are people doing in trucks? Most charging will be at home and when you go long distance you probably want something more comfortable and more efficient. That shape
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I'm having trouble finding stats but for example try https://www.plugshare.com/ [plugshare.com] and filter down to just CCS. I'm seeing over 1000 when zoomed out but more appear when zoomed in and it only gives the number visible in the current window, and only counts sites with multiple chargers as one.
Zap Map is also good but only for the UK. Again filter just CCS (note there are several types for the different wattages available) and you can see hundreds just in the UK.
So I don't know where you got 250 from... Maybe the
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However if you're talking about fast chargers in general then you're just completely talking about of your backside as there are two other fast charging standards that aren't just in prototypes and shown off in marketing materials, they're been in use for years already. Japanese car makers like Nissan use a standard called CHAdeMO while other Ameri
Are you really caught up though? (Score:1)
Rivian is not cancelling production of their own truck. Please try to keep up.
I am quite "caught up", in fact I appear to be ahead of you.
Because I can see that Rivian by itself doesn't matter. Maybe they will ship a few trucks (though not in 2020 [electrek.co]). If you are so "caught up", why are you bringing up out of date timelines?
But even outside that, the Rivian volume is not on the scale of Tesla.
It is only that Rivian platform combined with the manufacturing capacity and access to capital and labor that the la
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Rivian is not cancelling production of their own truck. Please try to keep up.
Rivian was planned for late 20, Tesla's 'truck' late 21, Tesla won't even be in the conversation for another year.
Plus Rivian's vehicles don't look like they came out of some 80s cyberpunk movie, which is nice. I like Telsa, I would love an electric truck, but I just can't get past the aesthetics of the cybertruck, Part of what makes Tesla's cars so alluring is that they look like, well, normal cars as opposed to funky shapes like the Leaf or whatever the hell BMW calls their two-toned monstrosity.
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It's just more evidence that the Car Companies are still terrified of Electric vehicles and what they will do to their margins and that they will never willingly invest in electric vehicles unless they are dragged kicking and screaming into it by Tesla.
Companies will use C19 to back out of bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies will use C19 to back out of bad deals and other bad decisions. Typically these contracts contain "acts of god" clauses. If this was not an "act of god" then I don't know what would be. So you have won a "get out of jail free" ticket. Use it wisely.
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If this was not an "act of god" then I don't know what would be.
This was the act of several imbeciles. A hurricane tearing your prototype lab into shreds is an act of God.
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Be that as it may, _de jure_ it's an act of god, and it will be used as such.
economics (Score:2)
On the other hand, the longer the car majors postpone electric vehicles, the further ahead Tesla will be. If Tesla manages to bring the cost of the model 3 down by another 10-15k, they would stomp half th
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I understand that there's been several waves of electric-car hype that came and fizzled out, but this one is pretty obviously different. If the leadership at the car majors are betting on this being another flash in the pan, they'll wind up in the business history books as a crew of executives that rode a legacy a
Recession = lower sales potential. (Score:2)
Getting traction for a new vehicle during the coming recession (or depression) will be tough. The smart call is to wait until sales potential justifies investment.
The economy was just headshot. The body hasn't hit the ground.
Getting traction (Score:2)
>> Getting traction for a new vehicle
Model 3 is propulsion or 4WD, you can't get traction.
And just 5 months ago it was the Tesla Killer (Score:3)
https://www.fool.com/investing... [fool.com]
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It still is (potentially). Ford and Lincoln cancelled a partnership with Rivian. That car you linked to is Rivian's own and still slated to finish construction this year. Yeah it doesn't help that it's a Rivian (and not a Ford or a Lincoln) in the picture in TFA, but by all accounts that car is going to come out this year and beat the Cybertruck to market.