Amazon took nearly a decade to become profitable, and seven years after its IPO, and that was during the crazy growth of the dotcom era. The article seems to try to make something of the company being around since 2009, ignoring that they were on a shoestring for multiple years until they had the idea and raised enough money to build their R1 prototypes which sparked significant interest. They're hardly hurting for orders with over 100,000 reservations still in their queue.

The article seems to want to pain as negative a picture as it can, taking the position that the Mercedes partnership may be a negative because Rivian cautiously (and properly) caveated the investment as not factored into their operational capital flow, when ninety percent of the companies I've seen would be fundraising on that fundraise. without shame and without looking back.

As for treating their initial reservation holders better, I don't think the CEO will ever be forgiven for the way he sprang the price increase on them, regardless of his quick about face on the matter. The company most assuredly could do better communicating actual useful information instead of warm and fuzzies with nothing actionable.

And finally, they need to come-to-Jesus quit shipping at a rate that doesn't allow absolute quality of assembly and requiring multiple service center visits. Whomever convinced the CEO that shipping anything to be repaired later did the company absolutely no favors.

I don't see many companies trying to build a multinational manufacturing operation from scratch these days, much less starting just before Covid kicked everyone's asses. Rivian will, eventually, be fine.