2021 Q3 Rivian Shareholder Letter – December 16, 2021. 71K Preorders Received

[Friscorays]

Bummer about March 1, 2022.

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[Pherdnut]

Your job has nothing to do with playing games with semantics. Hell is synonymous with difficulty, trouble, strain, stress, complexity, etc in the sense that it's not easy and full of unexpected problems to solve. Anything but pressing a button and thousands of vehicles spitting out of the line is hell. Ford, GM, etc. will go through production "hell" too on their EVs, you just may never hear about it because they aren't as outspoken as Elon.

It's silly to imply as an uninformed outsider (because of your personal distaste for the person or company) that Tesla just failed to plan for such a task of monumental importance, and they clearly adapted to the challenges faced. The quote "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" is appropriate for such a complex task.

Again, nothing wrong with it nor anything to be ashamed about. The only thing that can be expected planned for with absolute certainty is that something will go wrong that you could not have planned for or expected regardless of genius or foresight.

Except that so many of these challenges were self-inflicted and in fact easily predicted. You can't tell Musk that decades of highly financially motivated effort went into 100% automation and that he's brought no new compelling thesis to the problem. He's going to try it anyway because he succeeded at BEVs where legacy manufactures didn't seem to really want to and he's got the magic sauce now.

His executive staff's turnover rate is abysmal for a reason. He can't delegate. You can't tell him anything. And he's clearly way more impressed by his successes than his mistakes because here we are again, absurdly over-optimistic promises on timing and now design churn on the CT that's likely to delay it even further and launch that price through the roof.

Because of all of this, his blind spots are Tesla's blind spots. That's not a problem nobody can predict. Nor are the problems stemming from mistakes that keep getting repeated.

It's naïve to tell Rivian that production is hard. The CEO is a subject domain expert. He knows that certainly better than Musk did on his first three launches.

 

[Eticket99]

Businesses need to think long term if they want to survive and prosper.

Adding a new plant will do absolutely nothing for current employees working in the Normal factory over the next 12-18 months as the Georgia facility isn't scheduled to be completed until 2023.

At the same time, building the new Georgia factory will have zero negative impact on employees assembling vehicles in Illinois. Rivian has all the capital needed to talk and chew gum at the same time so the Normal manufacturing ramp up process and construction of a factory in Georgia have absolutely no impact on each other.

Couldn't disagree more. Adding more to dos for a company already behind schedule substantially will have a negative impact on the company. In today's environment of strapped skilled labor throwing more money at their current problems doesn't make them go away or go away faster, if that were the case they'd have R1Ts in hands last July. They only have 1 CEO, etc, leadership just doesn't scale the way they need it too in the time frame they will need it either. How can a company be trusted to open up another/larger plant in another state when the plant they've been working on for years isn't even at 10% capacity?

 

[BradSomrak]

Not a typo.

You can go back and listen for yourself. Its the follow up question part from Adam Jonas at 26:25 into the earnings call during Q&A.

Again, RJ says the. plan is to deliver the preorders by 2023 (end of 2022) and new preorders now would go into 2023.

I think we got our answer to this.

 

[Autolycus]

The issue is, and always has been, the ambiguity of “by 2023.” Many believe that phrase is equivalent to “before 2023,” but it is not necessarily so. For example, many people use “by Friday” to mean “by the END of Friday” rather than “before Friday.” So, “by 2023” clearly meant “by the end of 2023.”

Honestly, considering the S1 revision had already happened, I don’t understand how anybody ever interpreted RJ as moving the timeline forward during the call.

 

[cc84]

If I'm not given an exact timeline, such as "by midnight Friday", or "by the end of 2023", I consider the timelines "by Friday" and "by 2023" to take place prior to those dates. I don't know if there is any grammar rule for my interpretation, or whether it's correct, but it's never caused me any problems. Rivian is very good at this. There is no reason not to be precise, unless designed to cause confusion.

 

[Trandall]

Ok I finally did some quick research of the word "by" as it relates to time. "By" is inclusive of prior to and before the end of the referenced time. So by using the word "by" RJ is, whether intended or not, indicating any place in time leading up to and including the end of the referenced date.

 

[DuckTruck]

Ok I finally did some quick research of the word "by" as it relates to time. "By" is inclusive of prior to and before the end of the referenced time. So by using the word "by" RJ is, whether intended or not, indicating any place in time leading up to and including the end of the referenced date.

Trandall,

Thanks for the clarification. Now, if we could just get everyone on the same page regarding this rule, we'd have greater precision in our language. Let's hope that happens by Friday. ?

 

[SteveInBend]

Trandall,

Thanks for the clarification. Now, if we could just get everyone on the same page regarding this rule, we'd have greater precision in our language. Let's hope that happens by Friday. ?

Just whose timezone are you referencing?

 

[crashmtb]

Ok I finally did some quick research of the word "by" as it relates to time. "By" is inclusive of prior to and before the end of the referenced time. So by using the word "by" RJ is, whether intended or not, indicating any place in time leading up to and including the end of the referenced date.

I hope you got a grant for that groundbreaking research ??

 

[DuckTruck]

Just whose timezone are you referencing?

Mine. Always mine! ? (of course, that's PST for both of us)

 

[Trandall]

@crashmtb, Hey we live in a time when one of our ex presidents had us debating what the meaning of "is" is. I just hope I'm granted the opportunity to buy a LE R1T this June!
@DuckTruck, I see this ploy used at work... "We'll be done by Friday" ... Friday comes and goes, "Never said what Friday".
Apologies for thread hijacking.

 

[DuckTruck]

@crashmtb, Hey we live in a time when one of our ex presidents had us debating what the meaning of "is" is. I just hope I'm granted the opportunity to buy a LE R1T this June!
@DuckTruck, I see this ploy used at work... "We'll be done by Friday" ... Friday comes and goes, "Never said what Friday".
Apologies for thread hijacking.

No problems with me! I learned something new.

Far be it from me to complain about hijackers. I've been accused of many a thread hijacking over this past year, and I'm guilty as charged. [insert non-existent jail emoji here]

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