We anticipated Rivian’s Investor Day occasion to be a reasonably sedate one, stuffed with the standard monetary steering and perhaps some updates on new autos just like the Rivian R2, R3 and R3X. Clearly, we thought mistaken. Rivian as a substitute shocked the enterprise world by saying a three way partnership with Volkswagen that may lend the European big its software program experience in trade for a large funding of as much as $5 billion.
However issues go even deeper than that. In Rivian’s newest shareholder letter—and first noticed by BloombergNEF’s Corey Cantor on Threads at the moment—we see a picture with a number of doable new Rivian fashions below a sheet that we hadn’t seen earlier than at the moment. See under for extra:
A slide from Rivian’s launch.
On the left aspect, we see the primary technology of Rivian EVs: the unique R1S, R1T and the vans utilized by Amazon. Then we now have the second technology R1 autos, which InsideEVs drove lately. However there’s one other automobile beneath a sheet above these; is it the R1X? The true mysteries could be discovered within the subsequent columns, with SUV-like shapes that appear separate from even the R2 and R3 revealed earlier this 12 months.
However two of the lined shapes appear to repeat, suggesting both that Rivian is individually itemizing a number of variants of the identical automobile or, presumably, that the shapes are inventory “TBD” photographs that don’t signify the ultimate styles and sizes of the deliberate autos. I would keep away from inferring an excessive amount of till we get extra readability.
A Rivian spokesperson declined to touch upon our report. Presumably, these may then be future merchandise, as automaker spokespeople not often touch upon what’s coming subsequent.
Sadly, we realized little else about particular upcoming merchandise from Rivian’s investor name. However now we all know there’s some type of roadmap for the corporate’s subsequent crop of SUVs and vans, past even those which have already taken the web by storm.
Contact the writer: patrick.george@insideevs.com
