All of this was said about Tesla.
Competition is GOOD for the consumer. Having a monopoly from one company is never good for the customer.
What do these points have to do with whether Rivian will succeed?
I, too, am batting 1,000 (actually it was $100,000 on an original Roadster) including scoring an EV1 for 3 years to test out the technology even before that. Whether a company will succeed is a matter of whether they have all the right parts to succeed in their market. All of the early would-be EV manufacturers had various fatal flaws that were clear at the time and history has proven out.
Fisker had a beautiful car but terrible engineering. Their business approach only worked by riding Tesla's tails. Without a good product, they failed.
Miles (later Coda) thought that "build it in China" was what was needed. They promised and delivered an ugly aforementioned econobox, that could only even appeal to the diehard crunchy crowd if it had the right bumper stickers on it. It was destined for and only accomplished failure as well.
Phoenix Motor Cars and
Via Motors tried for the engineered production conversion of an ICE pickup. Both relied on government support through selling or avoiding ZEV credits and mandates for government agencies to purchase ZEVs if they were available. From the beginning, counting on the government did not look like a strong strategy. Neither could promise enough volumes to drive battery costs down to achieve any economy of scale. Both failures.
Aptera,
Wheego, and
Corbin Sparrow thought they could dodge vehicle homologation costs by making 3-wheeled funky-looking econoboxes that count as motorcycles. Similarly,
Commuter Cars tried the same by qualifying as a "kit", making the customer put in the last bolt or something on their Tango. As niches within niches, not enough people would buy it at what they would have had to sell it for to make it. All failures. Interestingly, Aptera and the Sparrow are attempting a comeback. Perhaps the drop in battery costs and increase in performance with Li-ion, driven by Tesla have changed the equation enough this time for them to succeed.
Zap focused on trying to sell golf carts as cars. Another fail.
Tesla was very different from the start. They had Design, Engineering, and Business and everyone in the company was onboard with it all.
Don't be such a downer Bridor.
Now, are we trying to bully
@Bridor into not sharing his/her insight? How is that helpful?
I hope that Rivian does succeed. Batteries are now more affordable and they have a product that is appealing. My only concern is whether folks will invest in them when they only promise to be another Range Rover toy for the rich. Sure, they'll sell a few trucks but, like Lucid, will never be a big player with huge returns on investments like Tesla's "Secret Master Plan".
I also hope they're delaying release until all is ready. Tesla has been late with essentially everything, however, when they finally did release them, they were awesome.
I'll take awesome late over 'who cares' on time any day.
