Hacker News Reader

Rivian actually had a really good quarter. They're still losing $32K per vehicle but this number has been coming down substantially every quarter so the margins are improving and they're almost at a break-even. Nikola secured a grant from California Transportation Commission for $42M recently. This one was very shocking because they were basically a scam company a couple of years ago.

View on HN

Wait, how are they almost at break even if they’re losing 32k per vehicle?

They went from losing ~$160K per vehicle in Q2 2022 to $32K in Q2 2023. So at this pace, they could break-even within the next 2 or 3 quarters.

On the one hand, they're trending towards break-even.

On the other hand, they're losing the price of a car amount of money every time they sell a car. Doesn't seem great for a car company.

Because they’re not. Nowhere close. Although 32k/vehicle includes all fixed costs.

By my calculations, with current ASP and marginal unit costs, they need to sell about 35k R1 vehicles per quarter to achieve positive gross margin. For reference they sold about 12k last quarter.

So, yea. I don’t think they’ll get to positive GM before burning through all their cash.

Edit: I should give them more credit. I didn’t think they would ever achieve positive marginal unit economics, but the last two quarters have showed that they have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com