If they get to production you would hope they would realise this by then.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
All discussion of Rivian Automotive
- Thread starter RobStark
- Start date
Presumably, Tesla is already working on a solve for this issue.
With a 4-5 ft. NACS to NACS extension cable, nearly any other EV should be able to front or back in and connect.. I’m sure TESLA is doing the math on most current and coming EV vehicles.
With a 4-5 ft. NACS to NACS extension cable, nearly any other EV should be able to front or back in and connect.. I’m sure TESLA is doing the math on most current and coming EV vehicles.
Last edited:
I will try my hardest not buy PEVs with the charge port on the passenger side, and especially not the front passenger side.
Making my 150 home charging sessions per year (more if I get a 2nd BEV) and maybe 10 DCFC sessions per year less convenient so that the charger cable can be a bit shorter doesn't seem like a good trade to me.
I noticed that too. Seems like a dumb design decision to me knowing NACS is the standard now.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Not sure how extension cord will work well enough without liquid cooling. V2 cables can only handle 150kW and they’re crazy thick.
Yes, they will have to be crazy thick, which means they can't be very long.
voyager
Active Member
Rivian and Apple?
"Whether Rivian is looking to Apple as a potential savior or partner, or is merely emulating the polished launches of such products
as the iPhone in 2007 or the iMac in 1998, is unclear for now. A merger with Apple could certainly provide a solution to Rivian’s
financial stress, but it would be an entirely new and possibly tough market for the personal-computer and smartphone pioneer."
"Whether Rivian is looking to Apple as a potential savior or partner, or is merely emulating the polished launches of such products
as the iPhone in 2007 or the iMac in 1998, is unclear for now. A merger with Apple could certainly provide a solution to Rivian’s
financial stress, but it would be an entirely new and possibly tough market for the personal-computer and smartphone pioneer."
SalisburySam
Active Member
Todd Burch
14-Year Member
Charge port on the passenger side is a really stupid idea.
Many, many garages are configured like mine, where the door into the house is in one corner of the back wall of the garage.
Depending on the side of the garage you park on, when you come home and park in the garage, many people will have to cross in front or behind the car in a tight space to plug in. If your garage door is closed, and your garage is tight, you’ll have to squeeze between the door and the car to get past. EVERY time you come home and plug in.
Then every time you leave, you have to repeat the process.
Why put it on the passenger side? That’s a really bad design decision.
Many, many garages are configured like mine, where the door into the house is in one corner of the back wall of the garage.
Depending on the side of the garage you park on, when you come home and park in the garage, many people will have to cross in front or behind the car in a tight space to plug in. If your garage door is closed, and your garage is tight, you’ll have to squeeze between the door and the car to get past. EVERY time you come home and plug in.
Then every time you leave, you have to repeat the process.
Why put it on the passenger side? That’s a really bad design decision.
I have 2 Teslas and one wall connector. What you describe reads like my home garage. I have to cross behind one of the Tesla's all the time to plug in the other one.
Its not a big deal at home. Just an extra 2 seconds.
Todd Burch
14-Year Member
Little things like that matter, especially when there’s no reason why it CAN’T be on the driver’s side.
In my garage it would be a pain because my garage is just barely longer than my Model X. I’d have to squeeze around either the front or back of the car to get to the port. I would have to turn flat to the garage door and scoot sideways carefully to prevent the dirt on the car or garage door from getting all over my nice button-down work shirt, or from tearing my jacket on one of the myriad metal pieces on the door.
If it’s on the driver’s side, you’re *already* on that side of the car when you get out. In my case it would save 10 or more seconds.
Sounds like not much, but now do it at least twice a day for years and it’s a whole lot of needless time wasted and risk to nice clean shirts and jackets for nothing.
Seems small but things like that add up to be the difference between an acceptable design that people tolerate and a great design that people love.
Rivian scaled up(ish) before they had sensible supplier agreements in place. Remember that they delayed R1 launch due to Covid (which, if true, was another mistake they made, I suspect, we’ll never know), so ended up launching right in the middle of the supply chain crunch. This was a big deal as evidenced by Tesla jacking up their prices A LOT. Tesla had actually already started to come down the cost curve from an efficiency standpoint, but input costs due to the supply chain crisis forced them to raise prices.
While the supply chain was bad for all things, I suspect it hit really bad with battery cells. As the supply chain crisis was hitting, Chinese EV automakers decided to also ramp up massively causing the infamous lithium spot pricing to skyrocket.
Anyways RJ has complained about the horrible long term pricing they entered into to get access to any parts at all. Indeed, the expiry of those long term contracts by the end of this year is what is leading Rivian to expect to finally see positive gross margins.
So that accounts for SOME of the cash burn, but it can’t be all of it. I’d have to do some serious spreadsheet comparison to see if their opex is completely out of whack too. I suspect it is since Rivian announced a 10% cut to that with no production hit.
Should Rivian have simply delayed their launch by a year to get better pricing? We will never know, but in hindsight, it might have been a cash conserving play. They would have had to lay off lots of people, which no startup wants to do though.
“Tesla shouldn’t dictate the location of chargeports for other manufacturers”
