MSNBC Article: Rivian Falls Apart

[SoCal Rob]

My mom asked if I’d seen this MSNBC article Rivian Falls Apart, which I hadn’t. I’ll be as kind as I can be and simply write that it seems heavily biased to me. Did anyone else see this and have any thoughts?

Sponsored

 

[Guy]

My mom asked if I’d seen this MSNBC article Rivian Falls Apart, which I hadn’t. I’ll be as kind as I can be and simply write that it seems heavily biased to me. Did anyone else see this and have any thoughts?

Yea bias and overly pessimistic but what do you expect of MSNBC?

 

[Inkedsphynx]

There were a slew of them posted in the last few days. Just fearmongering to attempt to influence stock prices further downwards, imo. Some of the articles I saw were comically badly written - like obviously a not-very-advanced-ai-written kind of bad. Given that plus the volume of them this week, I smell something foul.

I saw another article discussing this as a good call given the economic climate and allows Rivian to ensure their current operations will maintain full funding without having to raise additional capital in the short term. The stability of the R1 line is vital to the long-term health of the company, so this is a smart decision.

And further, nothing about what they've done precludes them from resuming a partnership in the future. This is all just good business.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Just more short and distort news.

 

[Jac]

This MSN (Microsoft Network) article exhibits little understanding of the capital requirements of a new manufacturer or the realities of ramping up production. I am not aware of a truck or SUV competitor that directly threatens Rivian’s product market positioning —- and most R1T preorder holders aren’t on the verge of buying Ford’s Lightning instead. Maybe Volkswagen’s planned Scout branded products starting later this decade?

Predictions of Rivian’s imminent demise are nonsense.

 

[obfuscurity]

My comment to someone else who'd dropped that link in Slack this morning...

that might the most "short-ing-est" article I've seen in a while

I will acknowledge that I'm both a RIVN shareholder and a customer. Just got my 8-step purchase process started this morning (i.e. delivery is imminent) and I couldn't be more excited.

But everything I read in that article takes something out of context, is lacking information (nobody knows why they backed out of the Mercedes agreement), or is simply out of touch (I'm in a couple different Rivian forums and with rare exception, everyone there is super happy with their vehicles or super anxious to get theirs).

 

[SoCal Rob]

Yea bias and overly pessimistic but what do you expect of MSNBC?

I thought most of it was just silly. From, “Rivian is barely in business.” to, “It lost $1.7 billion last quarter. That loss level is usually only posted in bad quarters for the world’s largest car companies. Rivian did it as one of the smallest.” It really seemed like the writer knew nothing about automotive startups and what the early days of Tesla were like.

For all the forum members who’ve been around for a while, it struck me as an article written by Peashooter.

edit:typo

 

[SANZC02]

My mom asked if I’d seen this MSNBC article Rivian Falls Apart, which I hadn’t. I’ll be as kind as I can be and simply write that it seems heavily biased to me. Did anyone else see this and have any thoughts?

My take it is click bait. It always makes me giggle when they talk about the losses, it is a startup, they are going to be loosing money for awhile as they ramp up. Key thing to watch is that the losses go down qtr by qtr showing progress. He seems really high on Tesla who did not turn a profit until year 9, without ZEF they did not have a profitable qtr until well into year 8.

People are misrepresenting the deal with Mercedes, they only had an agreement to work on a deal, they did not have an actual deal. My layman’s opinion, it is a positive they put that on pause (both rivian and Mercedes said there could still be some collaboration in the future), this allows them to focus their resources on production ramp and the R2 plant. This is more important near term as the R1/EDV ramp is critical to slow the burn rate and the R2 platform is going to be critical for a mass market platform if they want to survive long term.

Lastly the numbers people tall about for the stock price is really misleading. They really should only talk about the $78 price when they went public, there was no real basis for the meteoric climb to $172, that was just a feeding frenzy that really hurt the stock in the long run.

 

[SoCal Rob]

My take it is click bait.

It just seemed preposterously transparent as click bait / hatchet job to me.

 

[mabowden]

I've been hearing a lot about AI-written articles, This reeks of it. Either that our they employed a high school senior to write this piece. My independent city written newspaper is written better than this.

Much of what they said was true, but the same was said of tesla in it's infancy. At least that stuff was written better than this.

 

[COdogman]

SO biased!

Yes, it's true that all 114,000 of Rivian's reservations are "subject to cancellation", but wouldn't that criticism also apply to every other vehicle with reservations in place? Aren't the Lightning or imaginary cyber truck reservations subject to cancellation as well? It doesn't even leave open the possibility they WILL deliver all those vehicles LOL.

Also assumes the F-150 will bury Rivian just because it's "an electric version" of an F-150? Yes, but it's also more expensive than an ICE F150 and has less range than a Rivian when comparing the regular batteries, and unless you sport for the Platinum has a worse interior. It also has the same issues all EV trucks will have when it comes to towing, etc.

Also compares the R1T to the non-existent Cybertruck even when no one knows what specs, pricing, etc for that unicorn will be.

Also talks about how many EV pickups WILL be available in the future without considering Rivian was first, which is how they accumulated those reservations, which are also for an SUV, btw....

The "deal" with mercedes was nothing more than a joint venture. These fall apart all the time with other car companies but this one apparently means the end of Rivian?

The entire article boils down to Rivian will fail because they aren't Ford or Tesla

 

[jjswan33]

They didn't even mention their partnership with Amazon and an order for 100k delivery vans... convenient

 

[CharonPDX]

One note - this isn't "an MSN article". MSN nowadays has very little actual staff of its own that write articles - they mostly just republish articles from other outlets. In this case, this article is from "24/7 Wall St", just re-hosted on MSN. There is almost no "original MSN content" on MSN any more. They repost from that outlet, from Bloomberg, from Fox News, from Washington Examiner, from NBC News, among dozens/hundreds of others.

MSN is basically the same as "Google News" now.

 

[ironpig]

Don't click on click bait. There will be hundreds of these kinds of stories planted over the next few years. It's par for the course with the auto industry.

Also - this doesn't seem to get as much outrage as the Rivian recall did - https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/new...e-tailgates-can-open-unexpectedly/ar-AA15dU9n

Do you think everyone who knows someone who has a Dodge Ram is calling them today to ask about the recall? Doubtful. Rivian is just an easy target.

 

[Count Orlok]

that is not an msnbc story. It is something picked up by aggregators written by a guy who claims to have "written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St"

24/7 wall street is the most Shelly Levene of all montley fool wannabe sites.

Sponsored