R1S Adventure Delivery Day

[Guy]

4Q22 was over 10000. I don't think it's a stretch at all to reach 12k/mo - I think they will easily hit that in 1Q23.

I think you mean 12k in a quarter. I agree for Q1 and by end of year get to a run rate of 100k to average around 75k for the year.

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[Guy]

Delivery estimates were changed, not delayed - the mean still stayed the same even though a bunch were moved forward and a bunch were moved back. But also note that Rivian has been much better at hitting these windows over the past 6 months, and in fact is now usually delivering *before* the window from what I can tell. That means that these windows are more "real" than before - we can be much more confident of these new windows.

That's actually quicker than expected. I consider R1S production started in September. It's now been five months. I expected that production of LE and delivery of LE would take place first, and that Adventure deliveries wouldn't start until after that. By my estimate, R1S LE should be done before 2H23. So seeing Adventure just starting to be produced in Q1 is an encouraging sign, the way I see it. I expect Adventure production to be low until the LEs are finished, basically just to validate the build process while not significantly impacting LE builds.

Compared to the R1T, this is far closer to the production plan that Rivian had from the beginning. The R1T production was messed up, partly do to supply constraints, so they had to produce what they could when they could in order to keep up the numbers. That led R1T Adventure production to be much earlier than expected, and that broke the promise of LE having "priority delivery". But I have seen a lot of effort over the past 8 months to fix that process, and the R1S production seems mostly to be adhering to the intended process.

I agree that the price-protected R1Ts should be finished sometime in 2023, and I expect Rivian's income will rise significantly because of that. I think that the price-protected R1S will be finished 6 months or so later because R1S production is shifted by 6 months relative to R1T, but it may be sooner since adding a shift will immediately increase production rate for both models. I think end of 2024 is pessimistic, worst case. Rivian has said that by the end of 2024 all price protected orders will be delivered, so I see end of 2024 as worst case. When they make absolute statements like this, the number is worst-case depending on the "weakest link" If they can deliver 95% of price protected orders by mid-2024, that's not good enough, so their target has to represent the worst case. And for price-protected orders, the worst case is orders from Canada, where they are significantly behind in delivering, and Max pack orders, which they haven't been able to deliver. Both of these will prevent 100% of price protected orders being filled in 2023, but I think that the vast majority will be finished in 1H24, with only a trickle of exceptions remaining.

Finishing price-protected orders will mean a large boost in revenue, and IMO Rivian is trying very hard to get that out of the way and put those in the rear view - that milestone will come with a huge change in perception because it will demonstrate that Rivian has been able to deliver over its first two years.

We really don't know what the mix of orders is, or even what the mix was in the LE orders, but my impression has always been that R1T was the majority of the LE, and a majority of the price protected orders, but that the mix has tilted more towards the R1S has time goes on. Because the R1S ramp is (deliberately) 6 months behind the R1T ramp, I fully expect that it will take some time to hit their target mix, whatever that is. You don't expect them to slow down the R1T production just so they have the right mix between R1T and R1S, do you? Instead, what has to happen is the R1S needs to keep increasing production until that desired mix is reached.

They will take longer than mid 2024 for price protected S models because there are multiple people with 2H 2024 as well as processing estimates (NC etc). That is at least a year behind the T.
Additionally I would expect the S to ramp better since it is 90% the same as the T and they have more experience.
Rivian make estimates and have on occasion not met them, so an estimate for 22 months from now has a large degree of uncertainty but based on my S delivery estimate and others it will be very late 2024.
As for the delivery estimates based on a poll here 40% moved back, 20% moved earlier (typically by a shorter time interval than the delayed ones) and 40% stayed the same. So the next effect was a delay in timings.
I want them to succeed and have high production and revenue figures but based on the available data it is looking challenging. Time will tell.

 

[VSG]

I think you mean 12k in a quarter.

Yes, you're right. I just now edited my post to clarify that. Your numbers were in months and I was thinking quarters.

 

[LazarusTaxa]

These super off-track threads are why this forum is not great.

Start your own thread. This one is about this dude's delivery

 

[VSG]

As for the delivery estimates based on a poll here 40% moved back, 20% moved earlier (typically by a shorter time interval than the delayed ones) and 40% stayed the same.

Yeah, I consider that "poll" to be fundamentally flawed because it only allows opinionated answers. It would have been far more useful if we knew the exact "before" window and the exact "after" window, then we could analyze that data in a consistent way. For example, consider two people with an old window of Jan-Dec 2024 (which describes a lot of the people who participated - this is one of the main cases): the first one gets a new window of Jan-Jun 2024 and the second one gets a new window of Jul-Dec 2024. In my view, both windows got more precise but didn't change - the old window is just a narrower range than the new window. But how people enter this in the "poll" differs depending on their opinion.

The first person might say their window didn't change (if they're thinking about it as the first possible date of the window), or might say it moved up by three months (if they're thinking about it as the mid-point of the window) or they might say it moved up by six months (if they're thinking about it as the end of the window - the last possible date). Regardless, this will be viewed positively or neutrally.

The second person will always see this change as a negative, even though their new window is simply a subset of what they had been previously told and thus doesn't represent a "delay" of any sort.

Given 100 customers that had an old window of Jan-Dec 2024, 50 of them will have a new window of Jan-Jun and 50 will have a new window of Jul-Dec (actually, more will probably be in the second half because production ramp means Rivian will produce more in the second half, but let's gloss over that for now.) In reality, that was always going to be the case - roughly 50% in each half of the year, so providing a more precise window just clarifies which will be in each half, but doesn't actually move anyone forward or backwards. Yet the perception for people in the second half is overwhelmingly negative, and the perception for the first half is only somewhat positive. This is what I mean by an opinionated result - it should not be left to opinion.

Likewise, mathematically the distribution HAD to show that more people had their orders "delayed" rather than "improved", because the distribution is bounded on the lower end (sooner) and unbounded on the upper end (later). Without knowing the exact before and after windows, you can't determine the most likely value just by looking at the mean. And of course the average is not at all correct for the same reason.

So no, I don't buy the results of that "poll".

I seem to have hijacked this thread, which I didn't intend to do, so perhaps we should continue this in a new thread if there's something left to say?

 

[Dwayne T..]

I may have missed this but where is you current SC? Richmond? Did you pick up or have it delivered

 

[DonkeyMcdonk]

I may have missed this but where is you current SC? Richmond? Did you pick up or have it delivered

Yes Richmond, and they delivered it. The delivery team had a bunch more options than when I was trying to schedule delivery online.

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