electruck
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- Oct 6, 2019
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- 2023 Rivian R1S
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Announcing our new "CLUBS" section where you can join or create a Rivian club or group! You can use this new feature to conveniently plan and discuss local events, gatherings or other club/group related topics.
So we encourage you to join (or start) special-interest and regional-based Rivian clubs at: https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/group-categories/clubs-groups.1/
I don't know what to do with this information on a Rivian forum. Should we start posting all EV news. I read most of the auto forums. The fan boys at the Tesla forum keep things Tesla as nasty as they get.
I was going to quote the same passage. The move to fewer ECUs has already started, admittedly higher up the supply chain, with OEMs developing ādomain controllersā that replace multiple ECUs. So the vehicle will have fewer controllers, and more communication between those controllers and sensors and the like around the vehicle. I have only become aware of this relatively recently, but seems itās not a particularly new idea; I can find references to them from 2014.To tie this directly to Rivian... I am hopeful that since Rivian is starting from scratch and developing all new vendor relations that they, like Tesla, will be able to accomplish things the legacy manufacturers have been unable to (or perhaps just unwilling). But on the flip side, Rivian is not nearly as vertically integrated as Tesla which could potentially lead to the same kind of legacy baggage a product generation or 2 down the road.
I found the following quote from the article particularly interesting:
"Teslaās undeniable lead in tech is partly due to the company not being tied down to traditional automotive supply chains. The publication noted that if traditional automakers adopt a similar strategy as Tesla today, they would have to drastically cut the number of electronic control units that they use in their vehicles. This would result in massive blows to supply chains that vehicle-makers rely on."I translate this loosely to imply that the legacy manufacturers are forced to change slowly so as not to completely upset the delicate supply chain balance.
We've seen similar legacy "baggage" come up in the UAW contract negotiations centered around the difficulty of trying to keep workers employed when the parts they used to build are no longer needed and the potential replacement jobs require less skill and offer lower pay. The manufacturers need to pivot to new technologies but are limited in what they can do as they have to be mindful of the very large workforce that would be negatively impacted.