Rivian in talks with Amazon to remove exclusivity clause of EV van agreement | Hacker News Reader

Rivian in talks with Amazon to remove exclusivity clause of EV van agreement

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52 pointsrbanffy61 comments

Rivian's vans make so much more sense than Tesla semi - smaller vehicle, travel predictable routes, can be changed with existing infrastructure, and reduced cost of fuel leads to savings. So does reduced maintenance.

The best economics for electric vehciles were always going to be light and medium vehicles with high utilisation. Not personal cars. Not heavy vehicles sensitive to weight and power.

PS: I am wondering why Tesla is offering nothing in Vans, Minibusses, Busses, and even their pickup is nowhere to be found - instead are spending huge amound of engineering effort to build a heavy truck and associated infra.

Absolutely. I'm not convinced Rivian actually makes it out alive...But I fully expect that at the last dying breaths someone will step in and buy the whole damn thing. Likely Ford. Maybe Apple. Possibly someone in the EV space already but not in trucks/vans like Geely. Rebrand the vans as Volvo Trucks products. If it wasn't for Scout, VW would be a great fit.

Heavy trucks are extremely sensitive to fuel costs. They commonly burn more than $300 in diesel in one shift. Add semi chargers at some truck stops on major highways and every truck route that traverses those highways can switch to electric. In-town routes install a charger at the company's own site. The infrastructure isn't a problem.

Personal cars can be charged at home. The main impediment was getting the up-front cost competitive with ICE cars, but the base Model 3 costs less than the average new car.

Tesla sells every vehicle they can produce. So does Rivian. Because electric vehicles are going to replace ICE ones.

How much does $300 of diesel weigh compared to the equivalent electric range capacity with current battery tech?

The energy density of diesel is important to the economics of long-haul trucking. If you replace half of your cargo weight with your own batteries, it doesn't work with the status quo.

Engineering Explained did an episode especially on the topic [1], it seems a huge amount of routes could indeed be replaced by an electrical semi.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvg_i0GE0Vo

Currently weight matters because there are laws on the maximum weight of certain kinds of trucks.

However, I believe that with a good lobbying team, those laws could be changed if an EV truck maker could demonstrate they can do less damage to the road with a heavier truck, for example with better traction control and more drive wheels. Or maybe just wider wheels and lower or even variable tyre pressures.

Most trucks aren't at their weight limit. There will be electric trucks that can carry moderate loads for long distances and others (with smaller batteries) that can carry heavy loads for shorter distances. For heavy loads and long distances, you could use the latter and charge it more often, but you should just put it on a train.

They still serve very different purposes. Tesla semi isn't going to be driving down residential streets. Vans are not delivering pallets of chips.

I do think EV Vans will be a huge help for climate change and residential noise levels. Can't wait to not hear UPS/Fedex trucks multiple times a day.

Too bad EV doesn't fix the incessant back-up beeping. Or worse, Amazon's crunchy mechanical back-up noise. Not sure which I loathe more... beep beep beep or aaahnnn aaahnnn aaahnnn

You should visit the UK. The trucks audibly announce their intentions.

“STAND CLEAR. THIS VEHICLE IS TURNING LEFT. STAND CLEAR. THIS VEHICLE IS TURNING LEFT”.

On the plus side, that probably means those drivers are using their turn signals. It's a bit of a free-for-all here in the states.

It'll be worse. Present law requires EVs to also make artificial irritating noise in either direction.

I'd rather hear beeping than have more people end up flat.

I’m hoping for something far smaller than a car. A couple shopping bags or three pizzas in a very fast tiny delivery vehicle.

Renault Twizy

Apologies I didn’t fill it out enough. No passengers - ads weight and cost. Automated system that gets your shopping or pizza to you as quickly as possible with least energy expended.

This but on steroids, like a tron light cycle: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/delivery-robot-isnt-just-charm...

This is a pretty absurd comparison. A delivery truck vs a Semi, totally different markets.

> The best economics for electric vehciles were always going to be light and medium vehicles with high utilisation.

A point-to-point delivery company can use the Semi at high utilization.

> Not heavy vehicles sensitive to weight and power.

Semi addresses a huge part of the overall trucking market.

The big issue with utilization on large electric semis is recharge times, current designs of 300-500 mile range will need at least one recharge during the day and that will eat into the driving hours allowed by law for truckers.

Is anyone actually offering or proposing a semi with a 300-500 mile range?

That's Tesla's claimed range but I'll believe it when I see it. That project hasn't surfaced much since it's initial announcement as far as I'm aware.

Actually they have delivered some vehicles and they are in production. It isn't full speed production but its in production.

500 miles is tough and you need the right conditions, see:

https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/11/watch-tesla-semis-500-m...

300 miles is no issue.

It its a shorter distance with more frequent loading and unloading this might be less of a problem. Or if drivers switch between shifts.

I deally we'd have something like freight rail to larger cities and then smaller delivery vehicles from there.

> Not personal cars.

I agree. EVs (I own one they're cool) are additive solutions (more is better) and we need subtractive solutions to solve many social and economic problems (i.e. reduction in vehicle-based economic activity by using sidewalks). Probably more participatory economic activity too anyway. It's a lot easier to start a cafe than start a car company.

During the investor day March 1st there was what seems to be a van shape covered by a white blanket on one of the slides. There is an image here: https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-van-teased-investor-day/

I'm pretty sure the next two vehicles are a small affordable hatchback and a van. I least I hope so! I have a Nissan Passenger NV 12-seater van for our family of 9 and it's not fun paying $150/tank to fill up : S

Era of electric mini-vans are coming! Love it!

I think Tesla is suffering from a lack of management employees/skill to be able to release products faster.

As soon as they had the model 3 out of the door, they should have started the development in parallel of a few goods vehicles, a pick up truck, an offroad vehicle, and a few micro cars too.

They should have sped through the design stages, used common and off the shelf parts, and got them to market in 2 years.

Then, any model that sells well you redesign 'tesla style' (ie. vertically integrated, nearly every part heavily optimized for cost & performance), and re-release.

Not a huge Tesla fan, but they did release the Model Y. Then the pandemic hit. I cancelled my Cybertruck order last year when it was clear it wasn't going to show up till 2024 or later and pricing was likely going to go up.

Musk gave a presentation on Tesla Semis and competing with Rail. And if you take like 5 semis and put them butt to butt (to reduce drag), autonomously, you can beat the cost of Rail. And you essentially just took Rail and expanded the reach of it with all the highways in the US. So that is the grand plan, to go after Rail.

Presumably the congestion added by a bunch of 250' long trailer centipedes on the road would drive commuter traffic into Musk's surely-by-then existent hyperloop?

While Amazon has clearly not taken delivery of all 100k vans, they may also not want to do so at the rate Rivian will be able to deliver them soon. If Rivian scales to the point where they are delivering 10k (or 20k or 30k) vans a year, will Amazon want to deal with that? It's certainly not cheap to buy that many vehicles all at once. Plus it's Amazon's first delivery EV, so they're going to need to be installing a LOT of charging infrastructure.

Amazon also wants Rivian to be successful, as AMZN has a 17% stake in RIVN. If they can get a few deals from other major delivery chains, that would do a lot of help both their revenue (because they'd be selling for more than whatever Amazon agreed to pay) and forecast. UPS, Fedex, DHL. Not to mention hundreds of regional and local delivery companies. You could probably also find a lot of smaller groups that do their own delivery (ex Imperfect Foods) and own their own vans, that might be interested in going green ( ex https://blog.imperfectfoods.com/our-commitment-to-being-a-ne... ).

Worse if Rivian doesn't start to be a player in the EV Cargo space, the market will quickly be completely absorbed by the number of other players who are in the space and actively selling into it ( ex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEKMvZNkWCQ & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJRNceHBc4o )

Doesn't seem that complex to install chargers for these vans. Might cost as little as $500/charger. https://blog.consumerguide.com/rivian-ready-amazon-hub-charg...

Don't forget the required power feed and distribution.

I'm curious if Amazon's charger setup will be different than your normal charging setup. Presumably, you want to charge while the vehicle is being loaded so you want the chargers spaced out around the loading bays. (This nice tour video suggests that things may not be as efficient as I thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6lO2_2tyfY)

Those $500 chargers are the at home chargers. I suspect that Amazon would want a more expensive charger that handles higher power to get more energy on-board during a short loading period. As someone else mentioned, the distribution infra is also quite a bit of money.

Pretty sure these vans sit in the parking lot overnight, so they've got hours to charge and don't have to be in any particular spot.

I'm surprised by the statement of a $500 charger. That's what the L2 chargers at home cost and they are significantly smaller and shorter cables. The Chargepoint CT4000 ( https://www.chargepoint.com/businesses/ac-stations/ct4000 ) has an MSRP of about $9000 ( https://smartchargeamerica.com/electric-car-chargers/commerc... ). Granted a commercial fleet charging infrastructure does not need all the electronics related to billing, but they would want more detailed (network enabled) monitoring & control tools. Regardless of the unit cost, it's still not inexpensive to run the electrical. Gotta dig up the parking lot, run something like 30amps per parking spot. 1500 amps for 50 parking spaces is nothing to sneeze at, the copper cost alone would be decent. Then gotta repave it all again and install the chargers themselves.

So you're looking at maybe $2-5k per parking space, plus the charger unit? Depending on the economies of scale, where power is, etc. Of course, it'll pay for itself which is why businesses will do it. But it's not free.

Also, at least today, these vans are driven all day and charging takes overnight. Maybe some don't need a full 8 hour charge (because they don't drive that far), some are used at night, etc. But the needs would be somewhere close to 1 charger per EDV.

> Plus it's Amazon's first delivery EV

No it isn't, I see Mercedes EV Amazon delivery vans in London all the time:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/10/amazon-el...

Very cool. I stand corrected. "It's Amazon's first Delivery EV in the United States"

Rivian, afaik, already had production delays, and are struggling to meet even Amazon's 100k order. What happens to new vans produced if the clause were to be lifted? Does Amazon get preferential treatment? Do they sell the new vans to the highest bidder? Amazon's follow-up orders?

Amazon owns almost 20% of the company so this is interesting. Rivian being more profitable doesn't necessarily make the trade-offs worthwhile for Amazon.

agreed. if they fulfilled even 80% of their original order, maybe this would make sense.

These talks obviously are going to take a long time with a big company like Amazon. Rivian probably wants to start filling their order book for 2024/2025 which can help them secure additional financing to keep the company going.

Fleet sales take several month to a couple years to close. They have to start now.

Amazon's 100k order was probably a mostly symbolic way to make it easier for Rivian to acquire funding.

Production seems to be underway and demand for their vehicles is really strong. Being that Amazon is not really in a rush to pay for the vans right now anyway, letting Rivian get a little healthier on the books may very well be a good idea.

Might as well start working on economies of scale for the future if you know the product will be popular and sell.

Starting to get consumer sales started will help to anticipate demand and plan part orders etc.

Other outlets (The Verge) are reporting that Amazon actually only ordered their contractual minimum of 10k instead of the reported 100k, no source cited though.

Just for 2023, though. They're still planning to take delivery of 100k by 2030.

I don't think we know the unit cost of a Rivian EDV, but at $100k per vehicle, 10,000 vans is a $1 billion order.

> 10,000 vans is a $1 billion order

Luckily they only lost $6.8 billion last year.

Also doesn’t mean that Rivian instantly starts making vans for anyone else, might just allow them to advertise out the van platform to normal consumers or fleets. I could totally see them selling it directly - esp to the van life and small businesses.

The vans are amazing. I do a double take every time I see them on the road.

This is a thorough tour, and I want one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CWCqJl0BEs i

UPS, FedEx, and others are going to want these trucks as well, so opening up your customer-base just makes sense.

I wonder if Arrival delivered any vans to UPS yet.

Arrival is just one more of these companies that are basically dead. They cut most of their work force and will need many, many billions to ever produce anything at volume. And many, many more billions to ever be profitable.

UPS signs these agreement even if they don't expect these cars to actually show up. And if they surprisingly do, its ok because they got a good deal.

I watched the Amazon Rivian van walkthrough and it would be so much better than the Ford Transit EV for camping. Would be thrilled.

Amazon probably wants the vans first.

The entire EV sector is taking a hit as investment dries up. The only company I think will make it out is Aptera. Even though they have not shipped a vehicle yet, it's lower price point and transparent business practice will ultimately be a better investment with an uncertain energy, and transportation future.

It’s a toy. Seems like you are advertising for them.

I just really like the car and want to drive it.

I mean yeah. it looks fun

"I just really like it man" and "I think it will survive a high interest rate environment" are 2 extremely different things

Why? Most trips are short distances with 1-2 people. It seems like a serious option for our transportation woes. But it does look like a toy.

I'd say Arcimoto seems more interesting in the "move passenger vehicles into some 2-passenger space in between motortrikes and automobiles" than Aptera. Either way it's an interesting space, but that doesn't mean the rest of the EV sector is going to die.

Aptera has been trying to get some form of vehicle out the door since 2006... I wouldn't hold my breath.

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