Are we happy now?

[EVTrucking]

Does anyone have a good explanation as to why Rivian has not made public the number of pre-orders? I don’t think the IPO is the root cause.

Some guesses:
1. Number is so high that folks walk away.
2. Number is so low investors walk away.
3. ?

I have adjusted my expectation (3/20/22 pre-order) to late 2023-2024 but I cannot understand their reasoning for not sharing the number of pre-orders.

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[Khaneric]

With all of the supply chain issues, it's well documented that the giant car companies have no idea when they will be back on schedule. Rivian said back in June and again recently that they are experiencing serious supply chain issues. Why would you expect them to be "on the schedule"?

While I agree there are some supply chain in all parts that make up the car the vast majority of the delays have been from microchips. The reason most of the big automakers are screwed is because they cancelled chip orders at the beginning of the pandemic because they thought car sales would slump. Toyota was one of the VERY few cancel anything and hence their production stayed on track until just recently.

In theory, Rivian should have known how many preorders they had before the pandemic hit for at least the first year or two of production and there chip order (along with other parts) should have been in and stayed in a long time ago.

Will they be hit by shortages of aluminum and other materials, yeah probably, but for the chips, batteries, and other major tech components they should, in theory, have planed that a long time ago and have ample supply.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

Does anyone have a good explanation as to why Rivian has not made public the number of pre-orders? I don’t think the IPO is the root cause.

Some guesses:
1. Number is so high that folks walk away.
2. Number is so low investors walk away.
3. ?

I have adjusted my expectation (3/20/22 pre-order) to late 2023-2024 but I cannot understand their reasoning for not sharing the number of pre-orders.

While I've got you, can you tell me who won the Super Bowl and by how much so I can make enough coin to upgrade to the max pack?

 

[eggpaul]

I wonder if production is continuing right now. They must be parking those trucks somewhere of they are building them.

 

[EVTrucking]

While I've got you, can you tell me who won the Super Bowl and by how much so I can make enough coin to upgrade to the max pack?

If I could predict that I could almost predict when you will get your Rivian.

CS chat for me has become worthless for getting any meaningful information regarding delivery. The last thing they told me was R1Ts start shipping in Jan. 2022 and LEs complete deliveries in Spring of 2022.

 

[EVTrucking]

I wonder if production is continuing right now. They must be parking those trucks somewhere of they are building them.

I wonder if production is continuing right now. They must be parking those trucks somewhere of they are building them.

If they are producing and parking trucks then why not deliver them?

Maybe they are planning some big delivery event?

 

[Zoidz]

The reason most of the big automakers are screwed is because they cancelled chip orders at the beginning of the pandemic because they thought car sales would slump.
...
In theory, Rivian should have known how many preorders they had before the pandemic hit for at least the first year or two of production and there chip order (along with other parts) should have been in and stayed in a long time ago.

This is a problem that is not going away. It's an end to end supply chain issue, even if Rivian placed orders sufficient for 500,000 trucks 2 years ago.

Cancelling preorders has been blown way out of proportion as the cause at this point, and Rivian's assumed Preorder status means nothing when the factory fab plants are shutdown due to COVID outbreaks, shortages of upstream raw materials, 16 week delays in shipping logistics, etc. Preorders placed a year or two year ago can't fix those problems. The ripple effect is real.

Toyota is not immune (Aug 23):
Toyota Motor Corp. said last week it would suspend production at 14 plants because suppliers, particularly in Southeast Asia, have been hit by new Covid infections and lockdowns. It has partners clustered in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. Thailand and Vietnam are also seeing sharp increases in reported infections, as the delta variant spreads.

Other reasons:
- 5G chip demand, started before COVID
- US decision to prevent the sale of US semiconductors and other technology to Huawei, causing massive orders to be placed elsewhere.
- Stockpiling in anticipation (this may be how Toyota faired so well until recently)
- The winter storm/freeze that shut down Texas fab plants
- Fire in a plant in Japan

And it's not just what people think of as "microchips". There has been and will continue to be a global shortage of MLCC (Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitors) due to a lockdown in Malaysia which are general purpose components use in nearly everything. This has caused a ripple effect, impacting other capacitor types as well.

 

[Zoidz]

If they are producing and parking trucks then why not deliver them?

Ford and others did exactly this. They built the vehicles but were missing one or two backordered electronics modules, and installed the modules as they came in. Rivian could/might do the same thing...

 

[Harvest]

One of the reviews just posted was by Quinn Nelson at Snazzy Labs. He commented at the very end of the review that he had spoken to RJS during the test drive event and was told by RJS that he was confident they would get through all their pre-orders by the end of 2022 (didn't specify R1T vs R1S, however). So that was good to hear. Quinn Nelson also quickly referred to 40,000 pre-orders, but he did not state whether RJS gave him that number or he heard it elsewhere, so I don't know if I'd put a whole lot of stock in that number until it's confirmed.

 

[trickflow]

With all of the supply chain issues, it's well documented that the giant car companies have no idea when they will be back on schedule. Rivian said back in June and again recently that they are experiencing serious supply chain issues. Why would you expect them to be "on the schedule"?

“We’re definitely dealing with the chip shortage, as other OEMs have,” Fields said

My question was more about how they are "segmenting" the pre-orders. It's not that there are many different builds of the truck with packages. It really boils down to exterior color, interior and rim / tire combo. With that said, why would someone with a 2020 pre-order be given a date when someone with a 2018 has not even been contacted. I understand that batching the vehicle is more efficient, but that should be a large section of R1Ts between 2018 and 2020 on pre-order. Does not make sense to me and I do think something is a miss.

 

[EVTrucking]

I wonder if production is continuing right now. They must be parking those trucks somewhere of they are building them.

If they are producing

Ford and others did exactly this. They built the vehicles but were missing one or two backordered electronics modules, and installed the modules as they came in. Rivian could/might do the same thing...

I just read another thread on this forum that the thread poster did not observe any Rivian trucks at the site other than 1 on the test track.

 

[Smithery]

This may have to do more with limitations with Apple CarPlay. We bought a Hyundai Palisade a few months ago (before Rivian was on the radar). Nice wide screen on the center console. But CarPlay doesn’t take advantage of it because it’s screen is limited to a certain size. Hyundai Santa Cruz has the same issue. Apparently, Apple hasn’t caught up with the movement to accommodate larger screens wirelessly. I imagine this could be an OTA update/add-on once Apple updates CarPlay.

You're misunderstanding who is at fault here.

Your complaints are about Hyundai's CarPlay implementation.

CarPlay works just fine on big glorious screens from other manufacturers.

Back to Rivian - The hardware DEFINITELY supports it. Rivian just hasn't decided to write the software (yet, I hope)

 

[paariv]

I wonder if production is continuing right now. They must be parking those trucks somewhere of they are building them.

This is the key question for me. Did they actually start to scale up production, or did they more or less hand-build just enough production VIN models to meet their September delivery deadline?

The fact that these were employee/insider deliveries, that we have no signs of current customer production at really any scale, and that nobody's confirmed a delivery date in the next two weeks (yes, I know not everyone's on the boards), makes me think they aren't fully ready to produce at volume for reasons that aren't solely supply chain-related. There were a lot of little issues noted in the reviews that make me think Rivian can't really deliver to outsiders quite yet.

So, as I've posted elsewhere, this feels like the May/June guide contacts to me. A single burst of activity that's just enough to technically meet a deadline, but that pauses shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get more in the way of announcements until they have a solution to that doesn't imperil their IPO.

So, to answer the question posed in the title: I'm extremely happy with these reviews, which answer my "Is this a good car" questions. I'm happy to wait to take delivery until they get some very minor lingering issues worked out, and am glad the R1S is coming second for this reason. But I can't call myself really *happy* without more info about what they really think they can do this year when it comes to customer production at scale.

 

[Scoiatael]

Does anyone have a good explanation as to why Rivian has not made public the number of pre-orders? I don’t think the IPO is the root cause.

Some guesses:
1. Number is so high that folks walk away.
2. Number is so low investors walk away.
3. ?

I have adjusted my expectation (3/20/22 pre-order) to late 2023-2024 but I cannot understand their reasoning for not sharing the number of pre-orders.

Before the media blitz, Rivian was still fairly unknown. They probably have less than 50,000 reservations, and who knows how many will convert to actual orders. Compared to Tesla which has "millions" of CT pre-orders, and Ford Lightning is up to 150,000. Plus if you think about it, production is going to be slow for at least the first 6 months. If they only deliver 10,000 R1Ts out of 50,000 reservations in the first 6 months, that is going to look bad to future stock holders. Seeing a headline "Rivian produces 10,000 R1Ts in their first 6 months of production" vs "Rivian only manages to fulfill 1/5 of their pre-orders in the first 6 months" is going to cause very different changes to the stock price.

 

[EVTrucking]

Before the media blitz, Rivian was still fairly unknown. They probably have less than 50,000 reservations, and who knows how many will convert to actual orders. Compared to Tesla which has "millions" of CT pre-orders, and Ford Lightning is up to 150,000. Plus if you think about it, production is going to be slow for at least the first 6 months. If they only deliver 10,000 R1Ts out of 50,000 reservations in the first 6 months, that is going to look bad to future stock holders.

Keeping the number of pre orders secret for potential impact to IPO could be the reason. I think Rivians backers must know the numbers and they seem good with them.

If the number is in the 40,000 -60,000 range that should help the IPO.

You may be right that under performing production post IPO could significantly impact the stock price. That would be a good time to buy Rivian stock.

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