Barron's: Amazon Is Holding On to Rivian Stock. Ford Is Out.

[Count Orlok]

Amazon Is Holding On to Rivian Stock. Ford Is Out.

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[DTown3011]

I have a paywall for that article. This one is open: RIVN Stock Alert: Ford Just Gave Up on EV Startup Rivian | Markets Insider (businessinsider.com)

 

[Sgt Beavis]

This says A LOT more about Ford than Rivian. Ford is in trouble and they know it.

I thought Jim Farley would be a big improvement over Jim Hacket (who’s previous CEO experience is from building furniture) but instead he failed to revert the company back to the strategies that Alan Mulally had successfully implemented. The only good strategic decision he made was to go all in on EVs. That being said, execution has been highly flawed.

I deal with Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Stellantis, etc, etc,. Ford is, by far, the most dysfunctional group I ever deal with. They are ALWAYS worried about one thing, the price. They don’t care if the software actually works right for them. Pricing is always the primary business driver. It doesn’t matter if the software enhances their strategic goals or reduces back end costs over time.

GM, Toyota, and others are worried about costs as well but they look at the full picture. GM has at least 10x more vision than Ford does. Their engineers have a better workflow experience as well.

I also, just read an article on how Ford is having problems hiring new talent out of college. It’s an issue we actually can help them with but their HR is, IMO, too scared to make any major changes or, God forbid, invest any capital in fixing the obvious issues they have.

 

[RivianBlueSLC]

Not a surprise. I don’t think it’s that goes is in trouble… but more that Amazon basically owns Rivian. There is some compelling evidence that all the delays rivian has had getting it’s personal vehicles out had nothing to do with the pandemic and the supply chain, but more so that they prioritized Amazon trucks over the r1s and r1t as well as killed off by perhaps pressure making a van for mercedes and ford and that obviously didn’t sit well with Ford who is more interested in the personal vehicle side. I’m not sure how much of all that is conjecture but when you have rivian saying they dropped mercedes because they need to focus but then you have RJ out there talking about building electric bikes and all sorts of other distractions then it might be true.

 

[TexasBob]

Well, obviously. Ford's earnings are so paltry that any movement in Rivian share value swamps the rest of the results. That is what happened last year. Amazon has a big enough business to ignore the earning volatility an investment like this creates. Ford does not.

 

[R1Tom]

Not a surprise. I don’t think it’s that goes is in trouble… but more that Amazon basically owns Rivian. There is some compelling evidence that all the delays rivian has had getting it’s personal vehicles out had nothing to do with the pandemic and the supply chain, but more so that they prioritized Amazon trucks over the r1s and r1t as well as killed off by perhaps pressure making a van for mercedes and ford and that obviously didn’t sit well with Ford who is more interested in the personal vehicle side. I’m not sure how much of all that is conjecture but when you have rivian saying they dropped mercedes because they need to focus but then you have RJ out there talking about building electric bikes and all sorts of other distractions then it might be true.

I kinda figure service center locations more are implemented to service the Amazon EDV rollout than the retail R1 customers.

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