Rivian, which has developed an electric SUV and pickup, today announced an equity investment of $350 million from global automotive services company Cox Automotive. Cox Automotive, a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, is the home of nearly 30 automotive brands, including Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, Pivet, RideKleen and Manheim, which transports, services, and auctions vehicles across... READ FULL ARTICLE
Ok, this is almost getting odd. Normally startups raise money as they need it so that they don’t dilute early shareholders. Rivian’s raised $1.5B a year before their first car comes off the assembly line. Great fundraising prowess, but it would be nice to see more progress on the car building side.
I disagree. They have a factory to refurbish, tooling to buy, robots to buy, then they have to build a bunch of them to test with the full expectation that they'll end up recycling them, before they can start meaningful production. If I were them, I'd be happy to take the money up front to know that they would be able to make it to production.
Rivian is making progress on the car building side. Their factory has completed an initial batch of pre-production models, two of which are currently making their way from Argentina to L.A.
I figure Rivian needs another two to four billion dollars to achieve production. Too early. I don’t think any production representative vehicles exist. I suspect all of what we see on the internets is mule testing vehicles (prototypes). With more than a year from launch, they don’t likely have much production tooling ready except for the most simple or basic of components.