VW's Cheapest EV Is First To Use Rivian Software (techcrunch.com) 52
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Volkswagen's ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 -- a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday -- will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian, according to a source familiar with the new model. The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both vehicles are part of the automaker's new category of electric urban front-wheel-drive cars that are being developed under the "Brand Group Core" that makes up the volume brands in the VW Group. And both vehicles are for the European market.
The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian's vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW's software unit Cariad. VW didn't name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grunitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for technical development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a "fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture." "This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle," he said. "Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs." Volkswagen says the ID EVERY1 concept is a compact electric vehicle with a 70 kW motor, a top speed of 130 km/h, a minimum range of 250 km (150 miles), seating for four, and a 305-liter luggage capacity.
Volkswagen has a press release with additional information.
The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian's vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW's software unit Cariad. VW didn't name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grunitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for technical development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a "fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture." "This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle," he said. "Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs." Volkswagen says the ID EVERY1 concept is a compact electric vehicle with a 70 kW motor, a top speed of 130 km/h, a minimum range of 250 km (150 miles), seating for four, and a 305-liter luggage capacity.
Volkswagen has a press release with additional information.
Rivian? (Score:2, Flamebait)
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A company that makes electric trucks that don’t fall apart.
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They are very expensive to repair though. One guy got a minor ding to the rear and it cost $42,000 to repair it because the rear is a "unipanel" which went from the rear bumper and over the roof. Repairing it meant disassembling and reassembling half the car [disqus.com] including much of the rear electronics and glass.
So while they look nice, I wonder wtf is going on with automakers doing this stuff. Being able to repair a vehicle cheaply is important. It can't be easy or cheap for Rivian to make a unipanel so why not
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Oops this is the correct link [theautopian.com]
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I remember when trucks were work vehicles and not for emotional support.
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Other owners reported other expensive repairs for seemingly simple fender benders. Anyway it could have been solved by not having an ginormous panel that requires disassembling half the car to replace or affect repairs to. That's just bad design. I think Rivian is a great auto designer and I hope it succeeds but things like this would turn me off a vehicle entirely.
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"They don't make them like they used to"... except for Rivian.
From the link:
Cars with huge, unbroken body panels certainly aren’t unknown: both the Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia and the Volvo 1800S had one-piece bodies, with only doors, hood, and trunk/engine lids separate.[...]1960s and 1970s[...].
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Unfortunately they do also fall apart. My neighbor has one and in the last two years I think it's been in the shop or had a servicing van working on it at least a dozen times.
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Rivian is a company on which Slashdot has run some 60 stories about over the past couple of years. If you don't know about them by now as a Slashdot reader, you probably were never interested.
But even if you were interested there's a link in TFS that if you clicked it leads you to a page with the title "VW To Invest Up To $5 Billion In EV Maker Rivian" Do you want to take a guess at what Rivian is?
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But in case you have a bad memory already, It is overtly explained in the second paragraph of the summary.
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The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian's vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker.
I'm pretty sure VW is a German automaker, so process of elimination leads me to think Rivian might be a U.S. EV maker.
I kid, because of course I know what Rivian is- we have showrooms here. They tend to be clustered near Tesla and Lucid showrooms.
It might save the VW goup (Score:4, Informative)
Re: It might save the VW goup (Score:1, Troll)
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You mean these tariffs? https://www.euronews.com/busin... [euronews.com] The ones that VW was lobbying against because they will have an adverse impact on the company?
But really does VW need saving? I mean net operating profit of EUR19.1bn last year. EUR5bn net positive cash flow. I'm not sure they need "saving" or a "bailout" given the cash they have laying around right now.
How starting to sell a car in 2027 that the Chinese have been producing for 5 years or more (at a lower price) will save VW?
Also are you saying that the Chinese is producing the VW EVERY1 right now? If not, then you're talking about a different car. No one cares about plat
Re: It might save the VW goup (Score:2)
Let's buy Rimac for their ev tech and then we'll use Rivian's instead? How smart. Will definitely save VW that one.
It's Also a Door (Score:3)
How the fuck can you have a "four door hatchback"?! I assume they mean five-door hatchback? The hatchback is, in fact, a door.
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Doors are generally intended for people to pass through. The back opening is intended for cargo and such, not people, so is a hatch, not a door.
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I think you'll find that opposes the well understood definition of a "door". It has hinges, it has a latch, it is used to reversibly occlude a space. It's a door.
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"hatch vs door"
Google's answer: A door is a vertical, movable barrier used for entry and exit, while a hatch is a smaller, often horizontal, opening used for access or ventilation, typically in floors, ceilings, or roofs
A door is an entrance, intended for entry and exit. The back hatch of a hatchback isn't for entry/exit, it's for access.
Doors are also normally vertical, while a hatch is horizontal. Gull wing doors and such complicate things, of course.
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I think you'll find that opposes the well understood definition of a "door". It has hinges, it has a latch, it is used to reversibly occlude a space. It's a door.
You mean, a window?
Re:It's Also a Door (Score:4, Interesting)
In British English it's usually referred to as a 5th door. When you insure your car you would declare it as having 5 doors.
For example, if you look at the VW UK website for the ID.3, they state that it has 5 doors: https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/e... [volkswagen.co.uk]
We also call the hatch over the engine bay a bonnet, and the cargo area at the back a boot.
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You mean the trunk? Or maybe the boot? Why is it a door on a hatch and not a station-wagon despite having the same tail lift design?
The reality is that there is no consistent wording either in industry nor country to country. Which is why you get something like the Mini Cooper being referred to as a 4-door in the USA https://www.miniusa.com/model/... [miniusa.com] or a 5 door in the UK https://www.mini.co.uk/en_GB/h... [mini.co.uk] (you don't even need to click the links, they even refer to the same car as 4 or 5 door in the URL).
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Because, unlike a trunk, it allows access into the main cabin of the vehicle.
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You could have two front doors, a rear door only on one side, and the hatch. I believe there were some Hyundai Velosters sold in this configuration.
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That's what I was wondering. Because there absolutely have been 4-door hatchbacks. And people hated them. That's why they stopped making them and settled on 3-door and 5-door hatchbacks.
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e-up! (Score:2)
VW had a very successful EV called e-up! that came out in 2013. When it was revised in 2020, the base model dropped in price to 21975€. That was in a time when EV sales in Germany were subsidized with up to 6000€. Unfortunately they decided to stop production in 2023 although it was in high demand. In total almost 67000 of these got sold in Germany. Some say it was because its driver assist features were no longer sufficient for the upcoming EU regulations. It also predates VW's MEB kit that becam
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Official reason for production stop was parts shortage. The reason for not resuming production was the industry attempting to standardise on EV specific platforms to underpin their EVs. This isn't just VW. Several companies have abandoned well selling cars since they don't fit well with their plans of how to optimise production around modular platforms.
This is VW playing catchup with the Chinese who have used this to great effect to bring down production costs. BYD is currently on it's 3rd iteration of a EV
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Seems to be something of a trend recently. Honda released the "e:Ny1". It just a rebadged Chinese EV, mediocre, and not incorporating any of the stuff they developed for the Honda "e".
2015 called... (Score:2)
2015 called and wants their news stories back :) - We get this kind of nonsense every year for a decade now, yes, in 3 years, we promise this time, $25k. I'll believe it when I see it. So far EVs are on the decline if anything, world wide adoption is something like 2.7% and depending on the surveys 40-60% of owners will be going back to a regular car, and those are the early adopters brave enough to live with this. Sure it's ideal for some use cases, but usually as a second or third car.
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Yeah that's just not a thing. EVs are still very much increasing in sales, just at a slightly reduced rate. There's literally no country which is reporting negative EV growth in EV market share, and the overwhelming majority of EV owners are happy with their cars, with a few grumbling not about the car, but at the rate at which infrastructure is rolled out (something that is also in a global all time high).
and those are the early adopters brave enough to live with this
EV drivers aren't early adopters. These things have been around for just shy of 20 years now, most EVs
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Yeah that's just not a thing. EVs are still very much increasing in sales, just at a slightly reduced rate. There's literally no country which is reporting negative EV growth in EV market share, and the overwhelming majority of EV owners are happy with their cars, with a few grumbling not about the car, but at the rate at which infrastructure is rolled out (something that is also in a global all time high).
Yes, to a global marketshare of 2.7%. The growth is largely in places like China where people are forced to have them, or places like Norway where they are so heavily subsidised, it would be silly not to get one as a second car. In places where subsidies end, so do sales. Also so overwhelming is the happiness that on average around half are getting rid of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
EV drivers aren't early adopters. These things have been around for just shy of 20 years now, most EVs are several generations in and have seen previous generations completely removed from production and whole new platforms established. EVs are simply commonplace in many countries.
Here I agree, battery cars have actually been around over 200 years, they actually pre-date combustion cars. If you look at common VW models, the new generations are more expensive and have less range, also technologies like LFP have 30-50% less energy density and charge slower in winter, so in some ways we are moving backwards there, not forwards.
You got that backwards. EVs are not ideal for some use cases. For about 90% of the population they are perfectly suitable as an only car. Personally I'm never going back to driving an ICE car if I can avoid it. The logistics around driving an EV are just so much nicer (you people stop at gas stations every week? how quaint!)
You are living in a fantasy world, of the 2.7% of people that bought a battery car, 50% of them are going back to combustion. These are just the facts. The only thing that keeps any kind of stagnant growth is heavy subsidies that are all going away. All major manufacturers have announced they will be investing in new combustion models.
Range is not enough, especially in winter when it is cut by 30%+, you are looking at charging every about 1.5-2 hours of driving on the motorway, unacceptable. Even if you can charge at home (almost 50% of people do not have off-street parking), you need to wait 9 hours before you can drive anywhere else. If you are using between the recommended 20-80% charge, you are charging every 2-3 hours of driving on average, instead of a 3 minute stop every 1,000 miles or maybe once a month (what my diesel saloon gets as an example) - that is quaint and much nicer than faffing around with heavy charging cables in the rain every day.
When you have an EV you are basically missing out on life, you are tethered to the next high kWh charger, you can't decide to take that middle of no where scenic route, or stay in that quaint little boutique hotel with no chargers - you plan your life around chargers, charge levels, ambient temperatures, pre-conditioning, etc. Worse still, you may miss critical moments with loved ones, some emergency happens and your car is low on charge, you have to go find a charger, hang around for 30 minutes, maybe the charger is being used, then an hour later, you're out of charge again and the cycle repeats. What a sad sad way to live, and 97.3% of the world agrees :)
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Range is not enough, especially in winter when it is cut by 30%+, you are looking at charging every about 1.5-2 hours of driving on the motorway, unacceptable.
If I have to spend more than 1 hour every day in a car, I would seriously consider relocating. When I was a kid, my parents built a new home for us because my dad's daily drive was 2 hours.
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The logistics around driving an EV are just so much nicer (you people stop at gas stations every week? how quaint!)
Yes, that is so inconvenient to pull off my route for 5 minutes to get enough fuel to last me for a week. Maybe it's 15 minutes if I have to walk in to pay cash and there's a short line to the cashier. For those that didn't catch it there was some sarcasm on how inconvenient it is to drive a gasoline powered vehicle.
I considered a natural gas burning car for the tax incentives, lower fuel costs (though I have heard gasoline prices are coming down), and the ability to refuel at home. At the time one of my
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What comes to mind is how a gasoline (or some other hydrocarbon) powered vehicle allows me to "shelter in place" easily in case of a power outage. ... A BEV doesn't offer that
How would a BEV not be more practical for exactly the scenario you describe? If your goal is to only run "a couple 750 watt inverters", even a modestly-sized 40kWh EV battery would last you weeks, and you aren't going to do terrible things to your engine leaving it idling for days at a time.
I have no doubt you can construct some Mad Max scenario where the only option is to fill your car with hydrocarbons, but in the real world where you're talking about "tree fell on a powerline and we won't have power f
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Totally, the problem is with lack of physical space to park, insurance, road tax, depreciation, etc even at $25k, having a second vehicle is out of reach for the majority of car owners, at least in the UK. But I agree, these are not suitable as a primary car, but they are suitable as a secondary car for short city journeys. The other problem is in most of Europe, the cities are just not suited for cars, so a car is used for longer out of town / rural journeys with limited charging infrastructure and in the
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I reside in the state of Washington. [...] Where do I sign up?
TFS: "both vehicles are for the European market."
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WTF do you do that you drive more than 75 miles each way to and from work every day??? I live in Bellevue and it would comfortably make it to our cottage in the Cascades and back. If we weren't so heavily into gardening and remodeling it would be perfectly adequate for our use.
Finally (Score:2)
An inexpensive EV with no troubling associations with any Nazis!
Inexpensive? (Score:2)
Call me back when those things are at or under $10k. I bought my current ICE engine second-hand $2k. There is no way I will spend $20k for a car.
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"equipped with new functions" (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2)
Their "cheapest" EV - 20,000 euros / $21,500 / GBP 17,000, is almost as much as I paid for a mid-range car just 10 years ago that was by no means the "cheapest" anything.
And even new ICE cars are not available from Ford (where I bought my car) for anything under GBP 26,000 today.
That's literally the exact inflation equivalent of my 20,000 GBP purchase 10 years ago. VW's cheapest car is 21,000 GBP today.
It's gone from me being able to afford a decent car to me being able to afford ONE kind of petrol car and
What VW is getting (Score:3)
But the important stuff is architectural: Rivian has a lot of expertise in consolidating vehicle functions into fewer control units (ECUs), which communicate and coordinate over ethernet. This approach reduces BOM cost, makes vehicle layout simpler, and removes a ton of wiring and connectors. Molex (a major connector+cable manufacturer) explains this [molex.com] as Domain Architecture vs Zonal Architecture.
As an example: a traction control system - like AWD - needs access to the differentials, possibly the brakes, and a whole bunch of sensors. So it gets housed as a single ECU, probably sourced from a third party with 4th party code, but then needs a complicated wiring harness that spans all four wheels to bring in sensors, power actuators, etc. Also, it needs to interface with other subsystems, usually through one or more CANbus connections (which max out at 1 Mbps). That's Domain Architecture - a dedicated subsystem that does one job, but that needs to span the entire vehicle to do its job.
Rivian's approach - Zonal Architecture - is to have a few large ECUs in different zones of the vehicle, each tasked with handling one wheel, and all four coordinate traction control (and lots of other functions) cooperatively over a shared network (usually 1 Gbps Ethernet, possibly with specialized upper layers for guaranteed timing, etc.). The ECUs and software are vertically integrated 1st party - developed in house for maximum efficiency, reliability, etc.
Why?? (Score:2)
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