Rivian R1T electric pickup
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg
If – or, more likely, when – all the business books about Rivian Automotive Inc. start to fall, at least one should be titled: Do all the difficult things at once. The young company is currently trying to finish a factory and three different vehicles, while planning a road trip to a Wall Street IPO. Apparently, CEO RJ Scaringe was yet sleeping a little too much, because Rivian announced two weeks ago a plan to build his own charging network, too, at Tesla.
The decision, which Scaringe has hinted at for years, includes at least 3,500 fast chargers at 600 locations and at least 10,000 slower-loading “waypoints” at campsites, motels, hiking trails and the like, all installed in 2024. It’s hugely expensive capital project: the hardware just to build a fast-loading site can cost up to $ 320,000, according to one study, to say nothing of maintenance and other mild costs. In short, Rivian’s individualized intervention strategy is a silent accusation against American infrastructure: apparently, what is there at the moment is not enough.
Tesla opted for the same type of proprietary network, but it was nine years ago. The non-Tesla charge map has been densifying at the time, but the pines are still thin beyond urban centers and the center of the country is covered in electron deserts.
Tesla currently has 9,723 fast-charging cables in the United States, according to the latest Energy Department count. The rest of the combined networks have only 7,589 outlets for public cargo, and are much less dispersed. The Tesla club is covered in Millinocket, Me., Athens, Alabama, and Casper, Wyo. All the places where Ford’s new Mustang Mach-E, which has a strong juice, can fight to get free. While this is a challenge for Ford, it’s a bigger hurdle for Rivian’s “electric adventure vehicles,” which are apparently heading to wilder places than the Santa Monica market.
Power plug
Source: US Department of Energy
There is a good reason for the anemic load map. The microeconomics for a public recharging network is still a bit brutal. The benefits will not come without a lot of electric vehicle traffic; EV vehicles will not appear without many chargers. But at the micro-micro level, there’s another variable in the equation: chargers sell cars. Elon Musk saw it clearly a decade ago. When Rivian plants a charger in an electron desert like North Dakota, the revenue in return flows through a thicker pipe than in a charging empire that only sells electricity.
In fact, a look at Rivian’s map colors his business ambitions. It has a lot of chargers planned in Alaska, Hawaii and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Even Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia will see resorts. “We can be really creative in terms of locations,” Scaringe said TechCrunch in December, “so it can allow us to reach very specific and exclusive Rivian sites.”
Rivian’s load map
Source: Rivian
In addition, Rivian plans to deliver to Amazon.com the keys to 100,000 delivery vans in the next decade, including 10,000 by the end of next year. No doubt the retail giant would like to deploy (and load) this equipment widely. Meanwhile, non-Rivian vehicles will be able to use the company’s slower chargers, another potential revenue stream. “Excessive demand is a good problem,” says Ryan Fisher, an analyst at BloombergNEF, and it’s worth closing down preferred charging locations before electric vehicles infiltrate the country’s most remote locations, he adds.
The current auto industry has not been as adventurous, but it has another variable in the equation: revenue from gas. These cars can still sell vehicles in places like North Dakota, where loaders are scarce. As such, the industry has largely decided to legalize its own cargo networks, essentially bringing together a mosaic of interoperability agreements with third-party networks. Ford Motor Co., for example, connected in 2017 with Electrify America, the charging network that Volkswagen established as part of the liquidation of its Dieselgate emissions scandals scandal. (Public charging networks were even more important this week for Mach-E owners like Ford stopped selling the $ 799 chargers because some were not working properly.)
Finally, Rivian must think carefully about the long journey, specifically the great calculation of the value of the brand. The company has spent 12 years crafting the capital behind its name and almost every step has been deliberate – from producing snowboarding films for seven minutes to appearing on an Aspen gondola for an impromptu interview. “Guides” are also hired who will be personally assigned to a link with individual buyers.
Now, about to release the product, it would certainly be easier and cheaper to outsource the load to some third-party plug in a motel parking lot, but that would be out of line with the company’s approach so far. . Charging will be an important part of Rivian’s UX, no doubt as important as the lights, acceleration and ingenuity “Camp Kitchen” sliding under the pick-up bed. Apparently, for Scaringe and company, the reward – the potential savings from skipping the proprietary network – is not worth it.