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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.