Another major trend reforming the automotive industry is autonomous cars. On Tuesday, Cruise, a GM unit operating in the area, announced that it had raised $ 2 billion from Microsoft, GM, Honda and other investors. Rivian and Tesla are also working on automated driving technology.
Rivian differs from Tesla in several respects. Tesla has grown so far by selling sporty sedans, a type of vehicle that falls outside the favor of consumers. Tesla plans to make a strangely angular, futuristic pickup, the Cybertruck, later this year. But it has not yet paid much attention to the trucks and sport utility vehicles that make up 75 percent of the passenger vehicle market in the United States.
Rivian, on the other hand, is set on producing ‘adventure vehicles’ that can take owners off-road, an approach that means Rivian will not regularly compete head-to-head with Tesla. “There’s a perception that it’s all that’s a winner, and that’s just wrong,” he said. ‘Consumers need to have different brands and different tastes. Our success does not exclude the success of others at all. ”
Rebecca Puck Stair is the kind of car buyer Rivian hopes to attract. A film location explorer in Albuquerque, NM, has been interested in buying an electric vehicle for several years, but needs a high ground clearance and four-wheel drive capability for tasks that take her into the desert. “It does not exist in the market,” she said. A Tesla does not fit my needs. ‘
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About a year ago, she first heard of Rivian and the next day made a deposit on an SUV – like Tesla, the company has no plans to sell through dealers. Ms Stair saw the Cybertruck, but the design is not for her. “It just screams an unpleasant old truck,” she said laughing.
Rivian’s truck and SUV, starting at $ 67,500, look more conventional, as if it could have been designed by Land Rover.
Unlike Tesla, which is trying to grow fast, Rivian takes benchmark. Last year, before the pandemic took place, he said he planned to make about 20,000 pickups and SUVs in 2021 and about 40,000 in 2022. It does not offer any updated prospects yet. It aims to have a production capacity of 250,000 vehicles per year by the middle of the decade. The company did not disclose how many orders it had received, but a spokesman said they had set up customers for all the vehicles they expected this year.