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The status of the factory we saw earlier, is partially a result of Covid. There is also the issue of trying to hire and train the assembly line workers during a pandemic. This is why the release date got pushed out to June (I Think) rather than March or April.
COVID really screwed things up for the entire industry, so I would give them a mulligan on that. Also, I’m sure they were waiting to secure more funding before they built out more of the factory which they have. As far as I know GMC doesn’t even have a pre-production model of the Hummer EV, so I would say Rivian is further along than them. That being said I have no doubt that it will be produced, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the timeline slipped on that as well. : https://insideevs.com/news/450345/gm-admits-no-gmc-hummer-ev-exists-yet/
Tesla price announcement is always joke of the day as they never mass produce a vehicle with announced price. Did they not recently scrap base model 3 production.
There is a chance the 105 kWh Rivians might meet the same fate.
Part of the point about delivery, which I did not state clearly, is that base price and an options list with pricing is a part of the delivery process. COVID should have had no impact on that part, because that is work that can be done at home, and on a computer (virtual meetings). When the original plan for deliveries was for the end of this year, prior to any COVID interruptions, that means the configurator and pricing would have to have been in place before now. While I understand COVID had an impact on the factory build out and suppliers, that should have had zero impact on defining price and options.
I have spent my entire career in aerospace and have seen nothing like this:
No one has been asked to do any of these things.
Prices of components are not fixed they change. So, if you delay your order from say September to January you may get different pricing. If you change the size of the order you may get different pricing. There are a whole bunch of different things that need to be done in order to deliver these vehicles, most of which were affected by and still might be affected by the pandemic (it isn't over yet). Therefore, Patience is the word of the day.
Well this video of a prototype was on another thread, not pre-production, but definitely a real vehicle.
This is absolutely not true in automotive or aerospace industries. Suppliers and OEMs make multi-year agreements, i.e. contracts, that set prices, delivery rates, escalation clauses, penalty clauses, etc. A component supplier cannot suddenly raise their prices. At the end of a contract, the prices can be re-negotiated.
No, it absolutely is true. Had Rivian already signed all of the supplier contracts? If they did sign the contracts and say wanted to change the delivery dates due to Covid, might that result in a renegotiation? Maybe the supplier couldn't deliver the products on time due to Covid, that could also result in a renegotiation. There are all kinds of variables here, so unless all of contracts have already been signed in stone, things can change.
Rivian is still tweaking the vehicle design based on feedback/experience from the pre-production units like the one sent the the Rebelle Rally. Most of that will be software, but there are likely some hardware bits the need to be changed as well.
If they are still tweaking hardware designs, then that is an indication they are nowhere near ready for production.
