TFL snubbed by Rivian: video

[Tatnai]

Summary: TFL got snubbed by Rivian, reached out multiple times and never got a reply. They were not invited to the Breckenridge media event. TFL would like a customer to loan them an R1T for testing.

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[BigE]

What is Rivian hiding? Why would they be fearful of giving these guys an R1T to test drive? Not a good look and gives me great pause.

 

[Tatnai]

What is Rivian hiding? Why would they be fearful of giving these guys an R1T to test drive? Not a good look and gives me great pause.

I don’t think they are hiding anything but if you believe TFL should have been given an invite, it makes that question easy to raise.

Edited to be more accurate

 

[Friscorays]

Bummer about March 1, 2022.

 

[kommonplace]

My opinion: It's easy for things like this to seem Big and Important in a small forum. In the larger picture, it's important to remember that most people don't know who/what TFL is, and this isn't going to affect Rivian one iota. (And to be fair, most people don't know who Rivian is, either.)

 

[crashmtb]

And now I’ve heard of TFL and so they’ve got what they wanted. Well. Not quite. no engagement, because I didn’t watch the video. Sorry algorithm!

 

[rraj2k81]

I watch TFL review and they do good videos regarding vehicles. I would have liked for these guys to be able to review the R1T and R1S, but like a lot of Youtube 'Auto' reviewers these guys don't do much justice for EVs either.

Just because Rivian did not respond to their emails does not mean they are hiding anything. All it means is Rivian is way too busy with launching their vehicles and delivering them to their first set of customers.

I am sure every one from 'SuperCarBlondie' to some one with 10 subscribers is trying to get Rivian to give them a vehicle as a 'Journalist' to review

BTW, they also tried to get Tesla to give them vehicles for their reviews which Tesla never responded either. So did they say they are not going to review it, no they bought their own Model Y and started reviewing it, which they sold recently.

 

[Pherdnut]

https://tfltruck.com/2021/07/rivian-again-delays-r1t-deliveries-until-september-2021-report/

Pretty obnoxious headline and I think "struggling" was an unfair characterization. I'm not sure they intended the language as a jab but every single time Rivian posts something on social media there's Tesla cultists hopping in to spread BS about the R1s having been delayed for years. So it's probably a bit of a raw nerve for Rivian's PR folks. I also had the impression they've been leaning CT in a lot of comparisons, which you want to be careful to avoid doing until the products are actually reviewable.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

I think a lot of us are guilty of looking at this from the wrong perspective. We approach what we think Rivian's strategy should be from our own perspective of wanting to know everything about the vehicles and wanting to get feedback from as many sources as possible. It's important when looking at decisions like this to understand what Rivian's priorities are right now:

1) Maximize revenue from IPO. They are known to be targeting $8bn raised from the IPO, which is imminent. This revenue is pivotal to their long term plans of building additional production facilities in the US, the UK, and possibly Australia. $8bn is, by my best guess, 2x the entire volume of revenue from existing preorders.

2) Ramp production to full capacity while maintaining profitability. This includes the R1S, R1T, and the Amazon van. With somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 preorders and a standing order for 100,000 delivery vans from Amazon, there is sufficient demand as of today to max out production for about 2 years without another order coming in.

If you keep those two priorities in mind, it becomes easy to understand why Rivian wants to control their messaging until after the IPO. They have 2 years to generate demand before it would be able to impact their cash flow, and I think that they are supremely confident (with good reason) that just having these on the road will be more than adequate at driving the demand that they want in that time period. Part of controlling the messaging is limiting exposure to a specific audience of established journalists who they can count on to not burn any bridges by writing a hit piece before the IPO.

I'm not saying TFL specifically meets this criteria, but imagine if a Tesla Fanboy YouTube Channel got invited and put out a hit piece trashing them and then think about the potential impact that could have on their IPO; compared with the potential benefit that a positive review from TFL could have on pre-orders. When you take that into account, this is a no-brainer to me.

 

[Forager]

Isn’t it obvious? Rivian is protecting TFL. If the TFL folks thought a Silverado version of the Raptor/TRX was “first of its kind” and “game changing,” Rivian knew TFL’s heads would explode the moment they drove an R1T. ?

 

[Trekkie]

i posted a tweet on social media at rivian and RJ suggesting this was a dumb idea and they should resolve it, if more people do that maybe they'll fix it.

The fact that professionals ghost people is just not professional. I mean fine, if you think a channel with 350K subscribers is 'too small' for early release great, let them know that you are only targeting x size for first go round, but of all the channels I've found on youtube who do car reviews, theirs is the one most tuned for their target market.

 

[Pherdnut]

i posted a tweet on social media at rivian and RJ suggesting this was a dumb idea and they should resolve it, if more people do that maybe they'll fix it.

The fact that professionals ghost people is just not professional. I mean fine, if you think a channel with 350K subscribers is 'too small' for early release great, let them know that you are only targeting x size for first go round, but of all the channels I've found on youtube who do car reviews, theirs is the one most tuned for their target market.

Their videos look like they get pretty good numbers. I suspect viewership wasn't the problem.

 

[crashmtb]

The fact that professionals ghost people is just not professional.

have you had to try to apply for a job in the last 5 years or so?
”ghosting” is how the world turns now.

 

[DaveA]

TFL....Tough F***ing Luck. Luckily I don't care what YouTube reviewers think, but they can be entertaining.

 

[Trekkie]

have you had to try to apply for a job in the last 5 years or so?
”ghosting” is how the world turns now.

Yeah, and it sucks shouldn't be looked at as professional.

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