Rivian’s R1T electric pickup
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg
If – or, more likely, when – all business cards begin to fall on Rivian Automotive Inc., at least one should be titled: Do all the hard things at once. The young company is currently trying to complete a factory and three different vehicles, while planning a road trip to a public offer on Wall Street. Looks like CEO RJ Scaringe was yet sleeping a little too much, because Rivian announced two weeks ago a plan to build his own charging network, à la Tesla.
The decision, which Scaringe has suggested for years, includes at least 3,500 fast chargers at 600 sites and at least 10,000 slower-loading “waypoints” at campgrounds, motels, hiking trails and others like it – all installed by 2024. It is extremely large. Expensive capital project: Hardware alone in building a fast-loading site can cost up to $ 320,000, according to a study, to say the least about maintenance and other light costs. In short, Rivian’s strategy of going it alone is a quiet accusation of American infrastructure: what exists at the moment, apparently, is almost not enough.
Tesla opted for the same type of proprietary network, but that was nine years ago. The non-Tesla loading map has become increasingly dense, but the pines are still thin beyond urban centers, and the center of the country is covered with electronic deserts.
Tesla currently has 9,723 fast charging cables in the United States, according to the latest issue of the Department of Energy. The other combined networks have only 7,589 power points for public charging, and they are much less widespread. The Tesla Club is covered in Millinocket, Me., Athens, Alabama and Casper, Wyo. While this is a challenge for Ford, it is a bigger hurdle for Rivian’s “Electric Adventure Vehicles”, which go to wilder places than the Santa Monica Farmers Market.
Connect the power supply
Source: US Department of Energy
There are good reasons for the anemic loading map. The microeconomics for a public charging network is still a bit brutal. Profits will not come without much EV traffic; Electric vehicles will not appear without many chargers. But at the micro-micro level, there is another variable in the equation: chargers sell cars. Elon Musk saw that 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 for a charging empire that only sells electricity.
Indeed, a look at the Rivian map colors its sales ambitions. It has a number of chargers planned for Alaska, Hawaii and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Even Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia will see stations. “We can be really creative about the locations,” Scaringe said TechCrunch in December, “so it can allow us to reach places that are very specific and unique to Rivian.”
Rivian loading map
Source: Rivian
Moreover, Rivian plans to hand Amazon.com the keys to 100,000 delivery trucks over the next decade, including 10,000 by the end of next year. Undoubtedly, the retail giant would like to deploy (and load) these platforms on a large scale. Meanwhile, non-Rivian vehicles will be able to use the company’s slower chargers, another potential revenue stream. “Excessive demand is a pleasant problem to have,” says BloombergNEF analyst Ryan Fisher, and there is value in blocking primary charging locations before electric vehicles infiltrate more remote parts of the country, he added.
The car industry in operation has not been so adventurous, but it has yet another variable in the equation: gas-based revenues. These cars can sell vehicles in places like North Dakota, where loaders are rare. As such, the industry has largely decided to organize its own charging networks, essentially covering a package of interoperability agreements with third-party networks. Ford Motor Co., for example, connected in 2017 with Electrify America, the Volkswagen charging network set up as part of solving its Dieselgate emissions cheating scandal. (Public charging networks have become even more important this week for Mach-E owners like Ford stopped selling $ 799 chargers because some were not working properly.)
Finally, Rivian needs to think carefully about long distance – especially the large and squishy calculation of brand value. The company spent 12 years building the capital behind its name, and almost every step was deliberate – from producing seven-minute snowboard movies to appearing in an Aspen gondola for an impromptu interview. It also hires “guides” who will be personally assigned to individual buyers.
Now, on the verge of putting the product in the wild, it would certainly be easier and cheaper to outsource the upload to a third-party outlet in a motel parking lot, but this would not be in line with the company’s approach so far. Charging will be a huge part of the Rivian UX, probably as important as the lights, acceleration and abilities. “Camp kitchen” sliding under the pick-up bed. Apparently, for Scaringe and company, the reward – the potential savings of skipping the proprietary network – is not worth the risk.