Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf](assets.rivian.com) |
Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf](assets.rivian.com) |
It’s also not really the product that matters. It’s service centers, parts, repairs, manufacturing capacity. The traditional companies have entrenched supply chains to get parts, and cars, across the country and into hands. All the new companies have to build that from scratch. Producing a couple of something great is an achievement, it is not a lead.
It is much much easier to catch up on the product side than it is to innovate. And because the actual product is only a portion of total value, the companies that are “way ahead” with the most futuristic cars are really the ones playing catch up.
And, with EVs, the rules of the business have changed, pretty much overnight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
IMO: Rivian is ripe for a major investment from an outsider with a lot of cash, (like Amazon,) or for acquisition from a major automaker. An acquisition will only work if they are generally allowed to be independent and run with little interference. Given how direct sales without independent dealers are major part of the rule changes, it's very hard for Rivian to leverage an acquiring company's dealer network.
These are both hard to build, and require not only a monumental capital investment but also a lot of organizational experience to get right especially around QA and also can easily be a handicap for example established automakers often base their design choices on their existing supply chain and part availability as they often want to maximize part commonality between various models.
That said I do agree that as far as design goes it’s far easier for an established automaker to catch up to a contender than the other way around.
At least if they are willing to give up on some of the optimizations they squeezed out of the process over decades.
They not only put a lot of thought in to their trucks to make them some of the best EV trucks in the world, but if they stay focused they can continue to bring that level of care and attention to all their future vehicles. At that point the cloned features look cheap and are already behind by the time they hit the market. You see this kind of pattern play out all over the place.
Anyway, they’re competing more with range rover and jeep than trucks, which is fine (and also a mostly-unaddressed segment).
Why not? I’ve done “truck stuff” in a Rivian, like towing a 5 ton car trailer over the Sierra Nevadas. They have the same towing capacity and the Rivian has better battery range. They also cost the same similarly equipped. What’s the issue?
It’s good for typical suburban pickup truck uses though and could be a good farm truck since you could just charge it at home.
The F-150 Lightning is also a very good truck, and it gets to capitalize on the F-150 brand and customer base.
They addressed a gap in the market (smaller electric truck) rather than trying to go head-to-head with the biggest full-size truck brand in the industry.
Smart move.
How good the vehicle is becomes irrelevant if you can't make it at a price people want to pay. I still think Rivian can get there, but there is so far to go. They only delivered ~20k cars in 2022.
They did raise prices around 1 year ago but I've seen no evidence that they've prioritized orders for those who purchased after the price increase or who equipped more expensive options (options like tents and racks are shipping separately).
If you need a truck to haul stuff reasonable distances, EV isn't for you (at least not right now). If you want to save the world, then an electric car gets much better ranges with much smaller batteries and a fraction of the power usage.
This leaves EV trucks in a "why bother?" category.
And the reality is the waste majority of people simple don't drive long distances with trailers. Study after study shows how that simply not why most people buy trucks.
I guess don't say "The L-word" is some attempt to paint a rosy picture? "This is not use losing money! We're making a negativeprofit by investing!"
Negative gross profit means they are selling the cars for less than it costs to make them, which is like 'mega-loss.'
It's one thing to make $5k per truck, but then spend a lot on advertising to get the word out (eventually the word is out and you can slow down advertising/spread it across more sales).
It's another thing to lose $5k per truck and still have to spend money on advertising it.
EDIT: To be fair, this is because Rivian built big/expensive factories and still only makes a small amount of cars in those factories. A big question will be their ability to actually use those factories to their full potential.
If you know what Gross Profit is - negative Gross Profit is a fine concept. Why have a separate line item & term for positive and negative?
Building an auto manufacturer from scratch is pretty up there as one of the hardest/most expensive business challenge that exists. The fact that they have survived through the "burning money" stage to get to the other side at all is pretty powerful.
All the examples of car startups that failed only did so because they struggled to drum up sales in their day (DeLorean, Fiskar, Tucker, etc). On the other hand, I am seeing Rivians EVERYWHERE. They are selling them as fast as they can make them. On top of that, they seem to be doing a great job of releasing new models pretty quickly and skipping over the years of QC problems that plagued early Tesla.
If there's actually consumer demand for the car, and the marginal costs to manufacture are favorable - you can probably ignore all of the sunk development costs. SOMEONE would want to carry on the business. But we will probably see all parties involved eating or writing off as much of the debt as possible right now that they are transitioning to cash flow.
An important distinction. Otherwise selling cars would cost them money.
Like... I'm not going to load this up with fence posts and go out for a 12 hour day... plugging in the fence post digger to the battery... I'd be afraid that since I can't just toss in an extra gas tank that I'd be walking home.
And I can't see this pulling a horse trailer across the Great Plains stopping every 300 miles to recharge for several hours. (But I know North Dakota did finally get a Tesla charging stating!) Just feels like it's not quite setup for "real" use.
I can totally see some suburban guy using this to go camping. But... even that, like I don't want to leave this parked at the trail head for a week, when I'm hiking. I bet the battery would hold a week, but like what if it didn't? I couldn't just bum a jump from another camper.
One of the joys to being out in nature, is being away from "it all" -- including being away from the population density required to make charging stations viable. I think that's always going to be a fundamental flaw with electric "adventure" vehicles.
Cool to look at. Promising tech. But EVs are still "toys" in my mind.
Every single stastic and analysis shows that the waste majority of truck drivers barley ever use trailer and haul stuff in the extreme minority of case. And even then they mostly haul locally.
> But EVs are still "toys" in my mind.
By that definition, most F-150 are toys.
The reality is there is a 2 million a year truck market and EV trucks are totally reasonably for 70% of that market and that is growing fast.
But I legit spend a month a year on my family ranch... I still have relatives who live out there full time. 20,000 acres, nearest neighbor is 10 miles away, nearest gas station is 30 miles away, nearest grocery store is 70 miles away.
There aren't a lot of ranchers left, but it's not a fantasy for them. They need stuff that works. I don't know why you find that hilarious.
And for that matter... CA and TX both have energy production issues. We can't keep our homes powered during a blizzard, or during August, and I have serious doubts that adding more EVs to the grid will be sustainable.
Love to be proven wrong, but all the EVs come across as "rich man toys" to me still. Would the light stay on if everyone had a Tesla to virtue signal in?
> Revenue: 663 > Cost of Revenues: 1,663 > Gross Profit: (1,000)
Operating Expenses (Totals 795):
> R&D: 402 > Selling, general, administrative: 393
Loss from Operations: (1,795)
Interest income: 99
Interest expense: 33
Other net income: 6
Loss before taxes: (1,723)
Remember, all of these are in millions. So Rivian managed to lose 1.7 billion dollars in 3 months. That comes out to nearly 19 million dollars lost every single day.
It gets especially bad when you are a new electric car company presenting yourself as a tech company so that you can get tech-company like speculators throwing money at things that make no logical sense whatsoever.
That also creates a timing mismatch - Rivian's revenue in Q4 was $663M and its cost of revenue was $1663M, but most of the $1663M is associated with vehicles that they haven't delivered or even manufactured yet, so they'll recognize that revenue in future quarters. I don't know what it actually costs them to manufacture one vehicle, but I bet it's a lot less than 2.5x the revenue they get from that vehicle.
Leaving aside the accounting and addressing your real question: From a quick search it looks like Rivian has raised a total of $23B of capital between VC rounds and its IPO, and it has $13B of current assets (mostly cash + inventory) as of 12/31, so that gives it a fairly long runway even at its current burn rate. But its burn rate - loosely, revenue minus expenses - is expected to slow over time, assuming that (1) its revenue grows faster than expenses (it's expecting deliveries to ~double this year, which should increase revenue at a similar rate) and (2) its unit economics work out, i.e., its "true" cost of revenue is less than its revenue.
Tesla didn't turn a profit for 8 years, until 2020, and from 2016-2018, regularly had 12 trailing months of $1B losses or more.
(It's pretty much impossible to start a car company without outside investment. Just look at its factory.)
They will probably run at a loss until they can figure out how to lower their costs, and then make more volume. Pretty typical stuff, really.
I also suspect they will need outside investment. Given their relationship with Amazon, I could see Amazon supporting them until they're profitable.
Sometimes this succeeds wildly: Amazon.
Sometimes the vision fails to materialize: Uber.
Sometimes the vision was fatally flawed from the start: Carvana, MoviePass, ...
But they have the advantage that the IPO at the exact right moment and have absurd amounts of cash to burn.
Now that there's been a spike in consumer interest in EV's these companies would like to recoup that R&D, not to mention they want to be recognized as leaders in the automotive world. I wouldn't want to start a business to take on Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, Lexus - no way. Those guys will crush you.
The SUV and truck market is a different story, however and I think it's smart for Rivian to focus on that segment. They still have stiff competition from the likes of Ford, GM, Toyota and Honda but Toyota and Honda haven't been as active in EV's as the other world-class automotive manufacturers so you stand a better chance competing with them. GM and Ford have a history of failures in responding to rapidly shifting market demands (think of their disasters in the 70's and even into the 80's with producing cars achieving good fuel economy and lower emissions). Now is the time to compete against Ford and GM. Of all the upstart EV makers I think Rivian is best positioned to really stand out and make a name for themselves. As long as they stay away from cars.
Amazon already invested billions in Rivian and had to write off the losses. It is not a simple game.
The line items can be changed in that way and it still qualifies for GAAP.
You can even look at the 10-k and see they say 'Net Loss' instead of 'Net Income.'
The reason I point price out at all, competition is already available for less in places (F150 Lightning), and more electric trucks are due to launch shortly - not great if you can't turn a profit on six figure models let alone considering lower priced offerings to compete.
I own a Ridgeline. The bed is fine for chucking some camping gear, but it's nowhere near long enough for lumber, sheetrock, etc. Mountain bikes don't fit upright, even with the front wheel off.
The Rivian is 17" longer overall than a Maverick and 7" longer than the Honda. It's bed is really small - fine for casual use, but hardly suitable for "working truck stuff". And that's not the market Rivian is targeting, so that's fine.
I was interested in a Rivian until I saw one in person and saw how short that bed was. It wasn't the first spec I'd looked at on paper, but jumped out in-person. In that size I'd probably go cheap with a Maverick hybrid for now until there are more full-EV competitors.
We are not anywhere near where the infrastructure is ready for EV pickup trucks to be practical for a large number of people that currently need them. We may get there some day, but not for decades without a huge breakthrough in battery charging technology or manhattan project level investment in charging infrastructure.
I camp in the Appalachians regularly, from DC. There a quite a few spots I can't get to without a 3 hour charging detour (2 hours charge time, 1 hour road detour to get to EV station) on the return leg. And that's for areas that are only 3-4 hours away (one direction). [this was using ABRP and a mid-range Riviant R1T]
These are different problems.
Don't those sound like places you'd want to drive something like a pickup truck?
Also, the grid isn't ready for everyone to have electric vehicles using fast chargers. A heat wave takes down the grids of entire states.
https://www.experian.com/blogs/insights/wp-content/uploads/2...
If you go camping in those areas, you have to make a 3 hour charging detour on the return leg. There are no public chargers in the nearest towns or on the main road into the area.
If you rent a cabin, you can probably run a charger out the window. Rent a condo at the ski lodge? Not sure, they didn't have chargers a few years ago, but might toady.
If I were shopping for a new pickup, it would be hard to choose between the Ford and the Rivian because Ford has the incumbent automaker advantages while Rivian has the "cool startup" advantages. But in passenger cars, Tesla still has the Supercharger moat, which the Rivian doesn't enjoy.
So on one hand, post-Tesla, there's more public readiness for EVs.
On the other hand, there's a huge established EV-native incumbent PLUS far more legacy brand competition in the market.
So it's still a really risky playbook.
I was just making my comment based on the parent comment saying it couldn’t be done. It’s done all the time in every segment.
Never underestimate the bean counters from ruining the incumbents.
Tesla has so far to go to “wreck” anybody who didn’t already pay for “full self-driving”.
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-auto-sales-figures-by-...
It was a segment the ICE car manufacturers mostly ignored and now they have profitable competition where it didn’t exist before. Maybe not wrecked but definitely lold.
I don’t know what being loved really has to do with production. It won’t take long for a bunch of companies to have equally loved products, and in 30 years, Tesla’s “lead” will be a footnote. Unless they do, future tense, wreck everybody.
It’s a weird response to to my claim that everything but the product matters just as much, if not more. I’m not at all saying Teslas product is or isn’t the best at the moment.
100% anecdotal, but between service woes, initial quality complaints, and Musk's latest antics, several early adopters I know have sworn off the brand. And I know several people ICE-owners looking for an EV, but not considering Tesla at all for the above reasons.
Seems to me Tesla's only real edge at this point is the SuperCharger network. But, that lead will diminish over time, especially if they open the network to all EVs.
Tesla is still growing fast, has extensive self owned infrastructure in charging and service that will be very profitable and is a huge, huge asset. Tesla is competitive with European car makers in Europe, a market GM has dropped, and Ford mostly so relaying on VW MEB to stay in it at all. Tesla is competitive with car makers in China as well. GM and Ford have very little chance of even establishing their EVs seriously there. In fact the opposite, cars from China will compete with them in the US.
In the meantime the car industry has historically high level of access production capacity. Lots of old ICE and engine plants running below capacity, closing them is hard and costly. At the same time they have to do 10s of billions of new investments in new facilities.
At the same time the ICE sales are going down, lower economics of scale, access manufacturing means seriously negative margin. And that right around the time when anybody with half a brain will realize that buying and ICE car will be a bad investment and resell value will be low. This will collapse resale value of ICE cars and that impacts their financials.
Battery materials are a limiting factor already, and there is no physical way all the announced car makers plans can actually happen. Yes, mining is expanding, but not as fast as battery manufacturing and EV demand. Those companies that did not planned for this for the last 5 years will run into massive issues.
> It’s taken them a decade to get a dealer network built.
Meanwhile Ford and GM and co are literally in a war with dealerships over service. VW is literally suing its dealers and the auto lobby are launching a large scale lobbying effort to prevent the dealers lobbying effort. This could potentially cut 100s of millions away from the already thin profits of the car makers.
Literally every other car maker would kill to be in Tesla position.
> Their repairs timeline sound just as horrifying as their competitors.
Maybe be true or not, but on service, current car makers only maybe 20% of the money, the rest goes to dealers. Tesla will earn 100% of the money.
Its not well understood, but parts are a huge reason why traditional OEMs are profitable at all. Tesla meanwhile has very few old cars on the road, and many new cars under warranty. Despite that, Tesla service business is already profitable, and that is before millions of cars will go off warranty in a few years.
Again, literally every single car maker would love to be in Teslas situation.
One last point, if you insist on comparing how many cars they make. Look at the trendlines, not just a single year.
It also seems they have a pretty significant efficiency advantage per kWh. Whenever I see EVs compared, the general consensus seems to be Tesla has a lead above everyone else.
What’s even worse for the legacy companies is Tesla is the Kleenex/Coke of electric cars to a lot of young minds.
[1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4573601-tesla-gross-margins...
The car industry is consolidating. Chrysler is one example, they simply had no chance in hell to have any EV strategy. Now they have at least something thanks to their merger resulting in PSA. More such things will happen in the next 5 years.
Go look at how many cars companies like GM used to sell, and how many they are selling now.
Tesla is more profitable then GM and Ford combined, something that people would have not believed just a few years ago (not even mention debt, growth and other things).
They are not "wrecked" but everybody in the car industry knows that Tesla together with the rise of China auto is gone be a huge hammer to the rest of the industry. But with business like this, it takes years for these things to unfold.
Truly a work of art.
Too bad they didnt print the engineer's rationale, because that article isn't about that. But it is certainly referring to the product of the Giga-press being cast as opposed to being an assembly. A similar advancement happened in the aerospace industry, except this time the press is already for sale from Italy.
What I would rather see instead of one engineer gushing about a high-end manufacturing process would be Elon investing in automotive engineers who know where to route critical components and how to design maintainability instead of tanking shares on a social media vanity acquisition.
Your investment is safe forever.
Nobody likes car dealerships anyway so nobody misses that. The new trend amongst the kids these days is buying cars without even test driving them.
My point is that Rivian could easily find a crack that would allow them to be profitable and it wouldn’t even need to be as big as Teslas.
