Amazon reaches 10k Rivian electric delivery vans in US
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Financially, Amazon can currently benefit from Rivian selling vehicles at a loss. If Amazon purchases Rivian, Rivian's losses are now Amazon's. They would be out both the purchase price, and ongoing expenses.
If Rivian succeeds, they will be a good supplier. If Rivian will fail, Amazon doesnt want to be the one holding the bag.
Protecting the supply chain of parts for 10k vehicles is not worth much.
(You might say that in that case Amazon should be willing to pay enough for those parts/maintenance to make Rivian profitable, but they might be willing to pay more for an in-house department that will operate the way they want than for an external company that might waste money continuing to chase other revenue sources instead of gracefully winding down)
Rivian is worth 17 billion today, and loses a billion per year.
Buying them to support the Amazon fleet would be paying 1.7 million per van upfront, then 100k/year, just to ensure spare parts manufacturer exits.
That is one hell of a cost to avoid buying 3rd party parts.
2. AWS takes on a lot of risk. They buy hardware with lifespans measured in years and sell its use by the second. Not to mention directly competing against major divisions of Microsoft and Google cannot feel comforting.
https://itep.org/amazon-avoids-more-than-5-billion-in-corpor...
That's why SMEs cannot compete against Amazon
Blame the game, not the player.
It ain’t my fault they wrote the laws wrong. And I’m not giving away my advantage when no one else is gonna.
It would be a rather strange conversation with an accountant doing your taxes, if you walked up and said “hey, can you make it so that i pay more taxes than the legal minimum I am obligated to?”
But is telling anyone "don't minimize your taxes" really practical?
Running a large scale manufacturing operation in-house is comoletely different, and something Apple doesn't do neither.
UPS or others could start to buy Rivian products. But if Amazon owns them, and is using them for their own fleet, thus competing with Amazon Delivery Services, UPS would then be buying from the competition
This could kill potential deals.
They wouldn't gain any strategic advantage over any of the competitors in their industry by owning a vehicle manufacturer.
The only value of EV delivery trucks for Amazon is helping their brand image and reducing their fuel and maintenance expenses. They can get that with any electric delivery truck manufacturer.
The only thing that owning Rivian would do is put pressure on their profits.
Even UPS, who design their own delivery vehicles, contract out the manufacturing.
This is a somewhat funny thing to say about a company whose "business" has gradually come to include: B2C e-commerce, B2B e-commerce platforms, web hosting (AWS), brick and mortar grocery store chains (Whole Foods and Fresh/Go), pharmaceuticals, healthcare (One Medical), Twitch, streaming video games (Luna), film and television production (in-house and through its acquisition of MGM), consumer electronics (Kindle, Alexa, Fire), home security (Ring), robotics, and satellites (Kuiper).
How many of these were "related" to Amazon's business, which, as we all know, is selling books through the mail?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2021/04/30/is-amaz...
Amazon sells very few things that cost as much as a car, and when they do, they don't manufacture them, because each transaction carries a lot of risk and overhead.
That's not to say they'd never acquire them, but the lack of business alignment makes it seem less likely.
They could buy them a whole lot cheaper then as just an in-house van manufacturer.
It's incredible how much thought they put into them.
Strange how UPS can afford to pay their drivers almost twice minimum wage...to over $100k/year. And give them time to take breaks for necessary bodily functions.
The truck is awesome. You can tell they spent the time from initial prototyping to getting to production just hammering on it from a product perspective.
Most of its issues I’ve had are things that are going to take time and data to fine tune (it’s PAAK sensing for unlocking with your phone is a common complaint).
My biggest issue is the lack of CarPlay/Android auto. And the only real pain point there is the bad traffic data for routing. I still use my phone to get directions on anything that would be traffic impacted.
Edit: here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivian/comments/16fkli5/comment/k03...
I'll say that CarPlay would be nice but Tesla maps are very polished and some of the gestures and interactions I have are a lot nicer than when I am forced to use CarPlay.
Maybe it's just the cars I have used it in, but no pinch and zoom for maps in CarPlay. Seriously???
Overall, asides from Siri, CarPlay is behind Tesla.
Define "value".
I hate this sentiment. This kind of thinking essentially says that anyone whose primary product isn't software should not be writing software. And what it's really saying is "If you're not FANG, you have no business writing write software"
Full Disclosure: I worked in infotainment writing software for several years.
In the absolutely vast majority of cases yes, they shouldn't write their own software. Especially user-facing software.
> Full Disclosure: I worked in infotainment writing software for several years.
I've yet to see one that doesn't count as an unmitigated disaster
But, yeah looking more broadly, this is one of many issues which become a solved problem with CarPlay and Android Auto. The investment in smartphone functionality will always be orders of magnitude larger than whatever car manufacturers can build. E.g. I can choose which routing app I use!
By the way, I have worked for non-dominant FANGs in this space who also did not want to make that kind of investment. There’s a reason Facebook and Amazon don’t have their own routing apps.
The only "indie" map providers left are OpenStreetMap and HERE, fka Navteq/Nokia, now run by Daimler and some other car companies
Ugh. Even if it works.
No rear-view mirror tho--is that legal?
And if it might be like a U-Haul truck where it's stacked with boxes, the mirror would be occluded anyway.
NHTA/DOT requires two rear-facing mirrors, which requirement is met by the side mirrors.
Yea.. just ask any auto body shop charged with repairing them. :|
A gasoline/LNG taxi you can easily have 2-3 shifts
The drivers tell me they hate them because they report every speed limit violation to their bosses. Sounds great to me!
I can't believe how much the noise transfers.
> speed limit
I'd probably have to quit that job. I at least need the autonomy to drive the vehicle if I'm the one risking my life in it
This seems like the future, though. I'm sure some tech will be developed to do this to everyone, probably with a punitive system attached, per usual.
It's a large chunk of logistics. When EDL (electronic data logging) became mandatory a crapton of drivers left the industry because they could no longer fudge records.
The labor churn is an unintended, and ignored side effect.
Going 45 in a 40 is a 12.5% increase on paper but maybe 3% more deliveries in a day at best. I'd be shocked if that much honestly.
Speeding does not help anyone.
With stack ranking, this can easily get you from the bottom half to the top half pf performers.
Or to put this another way:
We have a system for perfectly knowing what the drivers speed is. We also perfectly know what the legal street speed is.
Instead of limiting the drivers maximum speed to the legal street speed, we instead just tell their boss?
Looks to me like Amazon wants their drivers to violate the speed limit but then also want to have a record of when they do so they can fire them for cause.
If you were cited for going 68 in a 25 you can point out that you were on the highway 10 seconds before and 10 seconds after the incident, and had no way to get to the access road under the highway. If your vehicle decided you were speeding and slammed on the brakes in the middle of the interstate, you'd need a much more reliable system.
If your relationship with your employer is dehumanized to the point where these reports, reviews, and penalties are interactions with an uncaring piece of software, that's a different problem.
Or:
The Amazon manager is either going to fire the employee after a number of reports or keep the reports in their back pocket to use when they need an excuse to fire the employee.
I don't know about the Rivian, but many driver monitoring systems are aftermarket retrofits, not vehicle manufacturer parts. The driver monitoring system is just a fancy dashcam with cloud uploading features, and a bunch of people in a low-income country manually labelling video clips.
I'm generally the slowest driver on my commute, judging from the fact that I rarely pass anyone; however, I go faster than the speed limit, at some point during the trip, nearly every time I get in the car.
I do not endanger those around me, in my opinion.
But having driven in Chicago and San Francisco, it's quite different in some places. Probably needs local differences in policy and application.
Speed limits are less about you and more about everyone else around you. Your autonomy means nothing to the mother and child driving the limit when you smash and kill them.
It produces a very nice after-effect of additional safety, but it's not the raison d'etre.
For the downvoters, “The speed limit is alternately too low on interstate highways, giving police discretion to make stops at will”
https://slate.com/business/2021/12/speed-limit-americas-most...
Seems like that is in a race with outlawing human operated drivers once autonomous vehicles become the norm.
Commercial grade gas powered landscaping tools can't be replaced with consumer grade electric alternatives, or even consumer grade gas powered ones, not unless huge strides have been made in the tech and power output. Pro grade mowers are upwards of 10k and run hundreds of miles a day, every day, often in the rain. I don't see that being replaced with a EV type setup. Throwing gas in something is way faster and less error prone than quick chargers, battery swaps, or dealing with a bunch of electronics that are always deployed into dirty, wet, and unexpected envs
Keep the gas powered equipment where it's needed but the typical weekly lawn service can replace their mowers and leaf blowers today with only slight tweaks to their day to day operations.
The tree company I used to work for begs to differ. Our 2 man crew alone could do 2-4 trees a day depending on size, with one guy in the tree with a saw and one on the ground running the chipper and cutting the large bits into smaller pieces.
Every example I gave was in context of the comment I'm replying to, and that comment was talking about commercial crews doing this stuff all day every day and replacing their loud gas powered equipment with electric solutions. Tree companies, lawn services, fence installers, lawn care/landscaping places.
> Keep the gas powered equipment where it's needed but the typical weekly lawn service can replace their mowers and leaf blowers today with only slight tweaks to their day to day operations.
Weekly for you. Every single day for the crew, sometimes all weekend too if they fall behind due to rain, etc. They have to have EV that is just as powerful and easy to jump on and get going, run all day long and operate in dirt and wet grass, and not cost a million dollars in chargers and spare batteries, which if they are lithium ion batteries, have to be replaced a lot more often than a gas engine w/ regular oil changes would. And when the electric motors burn out (they have bushings and coils which wear out with use), I can't imagine they will be cheap or available at lawn supply stores where you can go to get any gas engine part you need to fix your money maker that day
I'm all for electric replacements, it's just a long way off imo. These machines get beat on daily and have to keep running. Gas is easy, produces plenty of power, and is cheap compared to an aresonal of batteries and chargers and electric motors and all that goes with wiring those things in wet enviroments
Guarantee you that the guys mowing lawns around here in their beatup pickup trucks didn't drop $10k on a lawnmower.
But let's assume they are small scale personal beater pickup trucks. If they can't afford a nicer work truck and aren't able to purchase professional grade equipment, do you think they will be able to afford electric alternatives and extra batteries, etc?
Regardless, pro or consumer, they are all the same level of loud you are annoyed with. If you think it's bad as the person hearing your neighbors yard being mowed, think of what the operator is dealing with (ear protection is a must).
Maybe I'm indifferent because I used to do landscaping and spent time around all kinds of loud machines, but imo it's not that big of a deal. It is loud, I'll give you that. But pro mowers are fast, because more lawns is more money. So on a regular city or suburb lawn they are in and out in 5-10 minutes. Walk inside, or close the window, or run an errand. Sometimes people's occupation is an inconvenience to us, but it's a tiny fraction of your day and there are plenty of things you can do to minimize it.
On my street there are about 10 properties within earshot that get weekly service. And it takes a good 30 minutes with mowing, trimming and blowing. It doesn't bug me as much as some people but I'm not gonna lie, it sure would be nice if the equipment was all-electric. I think it may happen in a few years, but right now the support ecosystem is just not there yet.
It would be more expensive for sure. I think I'd be willing to pay somewhere around 1.5-2x for an electric crew, and guessing many others would too. It will be interesting to see if it turns into a domino effect when it starts, and especially with HOA type areas where there is more ability for enforcement.
If they can afford new equipment at all, then yes. Electric leaf blowers appear to be slightly less expensive than gas now.
I assume that what’s going on is that the actual electric mechanism is vastly simpler — the motor is quite small, so you put it where you want it instead of worrying about belts or other power transmission devices), and there’s no need to handle fuel. On the flip side, batteries are fairly expensive.
Landscaping equipment isn’t the most expensive, but it isn’t cheap.
Most crews are 2-4 guys with 1-2 mowers and they work all day long.
Going to a customer's house and consuming their electric all day isn't going to work out, or having extension cords strung everywhere, where you're literally dropping heavy trees with sharp right angle cuts, and cord snagging brush and branches, and you know, the chainsaw itself which will go through a cord in an instant and if it doesn't you won't be worried about loud noises anymore. Cord powered saws for real crews are not practical at all. That leaves the options - battery powered, and those do not have enough power to cut down large trees (I'm talking about more than falling a tree), or bring your own electric, ie, run a generator, which would be gas powered and just as loud and non-green as gas powered saws and still has the whole cord issue.
Maybe that was the case 5-10 years ago but not these days. A buddy and I cut 10-12" dia tree sections into rounds in short order with a 16" bar Ego chainsaw. It was, let's say, 10% slower than an equivalent Stihl but it had more than enough grunt and was incredibly quiet - no need for ear protection.
If you're using a dinky little 18V chainsaw then they'll choke on anything but the new stuff using 56+ volt batteries pack some serious punch. Gas chainsaws are still needed for some use cases but the lack of noise, exhaust, vibration, and fuel/filter maintenance positions them to fully replace gas chainsaws in the reasonably near future.
That sounds more like a dull chain than a saw issue.
[1] https://www.exmark.com/electric [2] https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/commercial-m...
Yeah because this is what the landscaping crews do every single week on my street. Not.
Jaws of Life are now battery powered instead of off a hydraulic system.
There are certainly pro grade electric devices; industry has been using large ac motors for a while.
Gasolind is certainly not easier than electric when talking about commercial vehicles with frequent starts and stops and heavy loads (a good reason why many fleets are more likely to use turbo diesels for the last 20 years). A diesel electric locomotive is a great example of heavy industry (and 2 very , and guess which system has higher maintenance costs.
Who said it had to be 18V? All my outdoor equipment is 56V.
https://egopowerplus.com/18-inch-chain-saw/
Good luck cutting down a 60 year old oak tree with a 2cc gas motor!
I don't think I've ever actually seen a 2cc chain saw. It would be like pocket sized, suitable for cutting pencils. 2cc motors are used in hobby rc cars.
The only real issue is that the blower doesn't last long on a battery, which is no problem for cleanup after mowing, but not so good for leaf cleanup in the fall. Since I now have multiple pieces of equipment, I do have a battery (and charger) for each including a large one for the mower that I can swap out as I'm working. By the time the last one is drained, I have been able to charge a couple of fresh ones.
However you need to keep the blade sharp.
The real issue with bigger trees would be the blade length, not the battery (well, unless you're taking an entire tree down in which case you'd need extra batteries).
Also, like any chainsaw, keeping the blade sharp is also key.
No, I haven't had to take any trees down, this is mostly for trimming and chopping up fallen branches etc.
Longer term I feel like two thirds of this job is very automateable.
I fully expect a fleet of little mower bots to be rolling off some mothership vehicle in under a decade. There's still shrub trimming & gardening roles that seem infrequent enough to be manual. And for a while I expect there probably would be an onsite human, but eventually it feels like it'll be regular enough for many dwellings.
I also wish this sort of thing were just done municipally. Trimming is once every other week. Bot swarm has a preprogrammed path. Rates are incredibly low for basic service. Shuttling gear & crew around for individual lawns like is bonkers inefficient.
Still a ways to go. Beer truck this morning had non white-noise backup horn. Nearly jumped out of my shoes.
It's always frustrating to me trying to get around landscaping trailers street parked on winding roads with no shoulders. Half the time you just have to hope that there's no one coming the other way too fast to stop.
I can understand that in some places there's just nowhere to park, if the driveway isn't particularly long or already filled, but even when there's a hundred or more feet of empty drive no one ever seems willing to back in and get out of the street.
Perhaps there’s options with large swappable battery packs.
That gas owner is 28 years old. I would if a battery operated plastic one would have lasted me that long?
He can charge his mower while between jobs and while using other tools. I would say it works for companies that do mostly residential mowing in sunny places. If you were a larger landscaping business you would probably want at least two crews with different setups: Heavy duty gas equipment for larger yards or tough first time mows and a battery setup for residential "maintenance" mowing.
https://opereviews.com/ryobi-40v-backpack-battery-system-rev...
To be fair, they probably essentially have to speed to meet their quotas, else they have very serious & real consequences.
If Amazon didn’t try to completely milk drivers for all they’re worth, I’d feel better about the detection/auto reporting. Yes it sucks they’re speeding thru residential areas, but they’re essentially pushed to it.
"Oh no, of course I don't want you to speed! But I'm SURE you can come up with a way to do this route in 50 minutes instead of 60! If not, I bet we can find someone that can."
is there a name for homonyms that are antonyms?
Some are also homographic antonyms! e.g. dust -- remove dust OR add dust
Is this a common experience? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed delivery truck noise. I’m talking vans and UPS trucks etc.
Bus noise on the other hand…
On the other hand, garbage trucks, parks department trucks, emergency vehicles, ice cream trucks, four wheelers, motorcycles...
Delivery trucks aren't on my list of noise nuisances at all.
Deliveries up, reviews of the product are fantastic, production problems being resolved.
Repair reports of 14k+ quotes, over engineering that adds weight for no benefit, burning through cash, production issues.
I have been seeing an awful lot of them on the streets in the Bay Area. It seems like there has been a real increase just within the past few months. I have considered buying one for myself, but decided to wait until their first model update when hopefully most of their remaining quality and reliability issues will be fixed.
I don’t own one, but the SUVs look really nice. For some reason I don’t like the truck design even though it’s very similar to SUV.
I don't know if the numbers support that, but I think the R1 is definitely a steal even at the current prices for the amazing package you get. The problem for Rivian is that most people don't actually want all that value i.e. track racing ability and off roading ability at the same time. So the flagship vehicle builds their brand but a lower priced compromise vehicle would be needed to make money.
TFL has a great take on this: "Most people will never offroad beyond what a Z71 can do. You do not need a Rubicon, you are not that good at offroading" Matches my experience.
They have to continue improving cost efficiency, increase production, and design and produce a cheaper "2" model line, and they seem to be succeeding in all of those things. The R2 line will be announced in a year or so with details.
They don't have a demand problem and they don't need to worry about what "most people" want because more people want what they have right now than they can actually produce cars for. What they have right now is of course a premium car aimed at the most lucrative segment of the market and people are lining up to get one. Their core problem is building more cars and do it cheaper.
Scaling production will eventually get them to the point where they become profitable. This requires reducing cost and working on manufacturing processes. That's a capital intensive business and the risk is that capital runs out before the company becomes profitable. That's why the stock is down. Several other EV startups have similar issues. And actually several legacy car manufacturers aren't doing much better but simply have more capital. Quite a few EVs in the market are being sold below cost price right now.
Once Rivian nails profitability is when they can start worrying about mass market appeal. They are clearly starting to think about that.
Tesla did the same thing until they went mass market with the model 3 and y. And even those had a waiting list. The model 3 ramp up nearly killed the company. But once they fixed that it became a revenue machine. Before that they did the model s in much smaller numbers and the roadster in even smaller numbers. They did not become profitable until just a few years ago. Now they are printing money of course and making millions of vehicles. And they are running circles around their competition in terms of cost.
Rivian looks like it might be on track to replicate that success but they have some way to go.
Which is good! Urbanism is dope. I'm a big urbanist. I also just deal with finding a spot because I like my pickup.
Chicago straight up banned parking pickups overnight on the street until pretty recently so you just never see them for personal use.
"Commercial pick-up trucks, junk vehicles, and any pick-up truck weighing more than 8,000 pounds are still prohibited from parking on ANY residential and business streets."
Quite a way from all pickups.
They are doing both!
Their production ramp is fantastic and they have three products that their customers love!
But they also have significant engineering and production problems that are causing them to be too costly. That, combined with the reality of being a low volume maker in a business that demands high volumes for positive cash flow, means that they are burning money quickly too.
This all reconciled around 2026 when R2 comes to market. It is make or break for the company.
Imagine you have a fleet of EV emergency vehicles. How do make sure they're operable in the event of a far too common electrical outtage?
You'd need EV lots, outfitted with chargers, and serious battery backup to make that happen.
We're pretty far away from that infrastructure existing. As much as I'd like to see ev fleet vehicles on the road, a too rapid, forced transition to ev's for fleet vehicles scares me.
I never got this concern. Gas pumps are powered by electricity, and you're not going to hand fill a fleet's tanks.
These questions may be legit but they always feel like a veiled attempt to discredit a viable alternative to the noise and pollution that is the status quo.
Providing redundancy for EV fleet vehicles is much more expensive.
It all relies on the cost of the battery going down.
See e.g. https://www.abcactionnews.com/simplemost/how-do-gas-stations...
Ford is 100-126 https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/
If we are talking about just an ambulance, the range could get higher, but there are diminishing returns eventually for a giant square so it probably needs an aerodynamic redesign.
I thought the question wasn't about the delivery vehicle, I thought it was asking about rivians in general. There's nothing limiting that range inherently, it doesn't have the greatest aerodynamics, but the goal is carry all those packages.
Sure this means you need more static power generation capability, but I think its a worthwhile tradeoff.
As for emergency vehicles specifically, that's what backup generators are for. And it's not like there are that many emergency vehicles in the first place. Keeping 3 fire trucks charged, or 4 ambulances, in a single location, with a generator, is pretty trivial all things considered.
The main vehicles that will probably remain gas are snowplows (often garbage trucks with a plow attachment). In major winter storms, snowplows need to operate continuously and are parked together rather than dispersed among small sites the way emergency vehicles are. But for that very reason, forced electrification isn't coming for them. Planners and lawmakers are very aware of these situations.
Oh my sweet summer child. You haven't spent enough time in the midwest. Power outages can occur on windless sunny days and last for a really long time.
Is there anywhere that tracks stats nationwide?
Maybe you mean Texas?
Except for plenty of people who rely upon package delivery for medications which can have very limited shelf-life, or require being chilled, with limited time before the icepack or dry ice melts?
While if it's a medical emergency, you should always have a backup plan anyways since packages get delayed for days all the time even without blackouts. Just last month an Amazon package of mine took 3 weeks to arrive because the UPS had temporarily lost it I guess.
UPS is not a life-saving service, and nobody should be relying on it as such.
Previous post hurricane situations lead to gas shortages, electricity seems to be more available in a scattered way, gas runs out often. Infra of course can go bad, but the situation of (better have a gas car after a hurricaine/emergency instead of an ev) is another one of those things that has turned out not to be an issue. It's also a thing that places run out of gas for a while, or the gas station doesn't work because it lost power and they didn't wire for a generator. Unfortunately it requires saying that "evs don't work in this scenario" is another piece of fud, along with they catch on fire all the time, need new batteries all the time. EVs are made by humans, they have limitations, just like all vehicles, but they work fine generally.
There are lots of examples where post hurricane there wasn't much gas
2017 - https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/09/florida-gas-shortage-... Shortage of gas after hurricanes.
2012 - Gas runs short after a hurricane in NJ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/gasoline-shortag...
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/28/apparently-we-need-to-t... - discusses the FUD accounts that become active after a disaster, evs actually good for idling in heavy traffic leaving hurricane.
In the US, Lancaster CA is a model city & they have plenty of resources online documenting their transition
The last typhoon disrupted gasoline supplies so bad that all the gas stations around were closed for 2 days due to lack of delivery.
Power grid didn't even so much as blip once.
It sounds like gasoline cars are the ones that aren't ready for prime time.
Amazon (through its "delivery partners") as a purposeful business model works people so hard they don't stick around long enough to have the seniority to qualify for all the benefits Amazon / the delivery partners advertise.
I think the idea of trucks with separate batteries is not the most efficient, environmentally friendly solution. There is already a quiet, electric solution that has been proven to be much better.
I think we should go back to trolleybuses[1], and expand them to allow delivery trucks. Hybrid trucks can use electric in city, and other fuel outside.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus
(edit: love to know the super quick hate, but no answers why?)
As others point out though, running overhead trolley wires up and down neighborhood streets is a non-starter.
It would be cool though if main streets had the overhead power infrastructure and if any electric vehicle could engage. Get a recharge on the go. This too could ultimately reduce the requirement for large capacity batteries.
Source: I live in Vancouver, BC which has an extensive trolleybus network.
Just seems like a super niche market.
I use a Model 3 for our daily driver (since all 6 of us usually are not going out together) and have a Sienna when we go out as a family, or for long distances.
I don't want an SUV, frankly I want the Canoo (https://www.canoo.com/) - but I am pretty sure they are going to be vaporware in a few years. Maybe the new Volkswagen will work.
(WRT large families, even a 2 + 2 might have to drive the grandparents or visiting family members.)
Rivian trucks notoriously have an egregious repair cost.
https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-that-rivian-r1t-repair...