Current daily production rate

[paariv]

Out of 55100 preorder as of end of October, and if you believe LE is the largest percentage of then preorders, it is quite reasonable to assume they will hit the target for 2022.

there is no reason to think LE orders are more than 10% of the 55k total. Maaaaybe 10k total - and I say that only as a concession to @SeaGeo .

You could only order one for less than a week in November 2020 when there were far fewer total preorders than the 55k in Sept 2021, and recall that they abruptly shut down LE orders without pre announcement.
Couple that with the fact that many preorder holders were waiting for max pack, or didn’t pull the trigger because they didn’t know Rivian would cut off LE orders, or no longer wanted the truck, or didn’t want v1 of the truck…

Filling all LE orders just can’t work through much of the backlog.

Sponsored

 

[BradSomrak]

So let's assume they ramp up LE deliveries slowly through January and Feb as they're suggesting. They then deliver the vast majority of the roughly.... 10k remaining LE by end of July. What're they doing the rest of the year? And how many adventure trims are they manufacturing from March through July? Hopefully we get an idea of that next week.

I agree with almost all of your prior post. The questions you have, which I quoted, are what I am wondering, as well. How many Adventure trims are they doing before they clear the LE backorder? That will obviously be significant to all of us non-LE holders and our delivery windows.

Agree that we should have an idea this week. If a lot of non-LE holders get their dates for late 2022, or even early ‘23, we know Rivian will be producing a considerable amount of Adventure trims (and, eventually, Explore trims) simultaneous with its LE production.

 

[SeaGeo]

there is no reason to think LE orders are more than 10% of the 55k total.

There is. If you look at the current delivery window poll that the RS crew has put out, the preorders between October and now are proportionally underrepresented by about 2x. To try and unskew the poll for launch editions and early adopters and you (hopefully conservatively) assume that same ratio of underrepresentation occurs for all preorders that aren't launch editions, you still come out with about 15k launch editions.

I'm curious to see how that poll changes with the rest of us peons with Adventure and Explore trims getting delivery windows, but that 15k number surprised me in any case.

 

[SeaGeo]

I agree with almost all of your prior post. The questions you have, which I quoted, are what I am wondering, as well. How many Adventure trims are they doing before they clear the LE backorder? That will obviously be significant to all of us non-LE holders and our delivery windows.

Agree that we should have an idea this week. If a lot of non-LE holders get their dates for late 2022, or even early ‘23, we know Rivian will be producing a considerable amount of Adventure trims (and, eventually, Explore trims) simultaneous with its LE production.

Yeah, and I wasn't implying that you and I are on a totally different page here. Your points were just a good jumping off spot to reply to.

That question, and what they're going to do are two kind of nuance projections that I'm curious to see. I would hope Rivian prioritizes the very early max pack preorder holders with the launch editions, but would then expect them to minimize production of the max pack to stretch their cell and pack supplies as far as they can in the near term.

 

[DuckTruck]

My guess - close to 30K out the door in 2022. 'Averaging ~580 a week, ~12 vehicles per hour, ~50 hours a week, ~51 weeks.

When the R1 line is running at full capacity, RJ said the plan is to produce 15 vehicles per hour, or one every four minutes, for 18 hours per day. This gives us a best case outcome of 270 units daily. I seem to remember that they may run two nine-hour shifts per day (with staggered lunches) for up to six days per week. That peak production level is once everything and everyone is working to perfection, which necessitates no supply shortages or bottlenecks.

With all the outside issues causing world-wide problems with supplies, I'm hoping they're gaining solid process improvement on the assembly piece of the puzzle, all along the line. As these outside supply problems subside (who knows when?), the daily numbers will come up. I'm not going to speculate on y/e 2022 numbers, I just want the quality to be the best it can be. I'll be really upset if a Tesla-like "Cyber-Circus Tent" ever shows up at the North end of the production facility to fix problems manufactured on the line. I don't see that happening in Normal.

I've always been fascinated with the precision of old pocket watches, but I've never been a fan of the circus.... ?

 

[Atlrivian]

There is. If you look at the current delivery window poll that the RS crew has put out, the preorders between October and now are proportionally underrepresented by about 2x. To try and unskew the poll for launch editions and early adopters and you (hopefully conservatively) assume that same ratio of underrepresentation occurs for all preorders that aren't launch editions, you still come out with about 15k launch editions.

I'm curious to see how that poll changes with the rest of us peons with Adventure and Explore trims getting delivery windows, but that 15k number surprised me in any case.

Someone should create a new spreadsheet poll for non-LE trim delivery dates. I'd be interested to know the breakdowns for r1t/s, adventure/explore, max/large and location. Beyond my capabilities.

 

[paariv]

There is. If you look at the current delivery window poll that the RS crew has put out, the preorders between October and now are proportionally underrepresented by about 2x. To try and unskew the poll for launch editions and early adopters and you (hopefully conservatively) assume that same ratio of underrepresentation occurs for all preorders that aren't launch editions, you still come out with about 15k launch editions.

I don’t know the specifics of the poll but you really can’t take a voluntary poll on an early adopter/enthusiast site and extrapolate from it to the general population.

Just think about it big picture. 15k is way too high. How many preorders did they have in November 2020 - 20k? No way were 75% of them converted to Launch editions, especially given the low publicity about ordering, tiny ordering window, max pack orders, people backing out, reluctance to be a “late beta” tester by taking early delivery, etc…

Also, Rivian plans to build ~all LEs in the first half of 2022, and build some non-LE vehicles during that time as well. And they’re still ramping up production. Are they really projecting that they’ll build way more than 30k vehicles in 2022? That wouldn’t be realistic.

And wasn’t the original plan to build all LEs in the last 4 months of 2021? They can’t have been realistically planning that if they had 15k orders.

 

[Guy]

I think we can say with some degree of confidence that at the absolute low end there's 5k. That's not based on anything more than guy. My best estimate at the moment trying to unskew some unscientific skews is in the 15k range for launch editions. 25k is, as you noted, probably pretty close to to a theoretical max, and doesn't make a lot of sense given their delivery timelines.

Things that we know from Rivian:
-they think they can delivery nearly all launch editions by July. Those in the last delivery window are generally in hard to reach locations for them.
- They're planning to deliver Adventure trims in the spring to early summer.
-They don't plan on hitting their annualized 65k max production before end of 2023. But they were (at one point) planning on delivering about 45k trucks by end of 2022.

So let's assume they ramp up LE deliveries slowly through January and Feb as they're suggesting. They then deliver the vast majority of the roughly.... 10k remaining LE by end of July. What're they doing the rest of the year? And how many adventure trims are they manufacturing from March through July? Hopefully we get an idea of that next week.

Well argued and reasoned comment. I would expect most answers next week, and the. The quarterly analyst calls provide updates on how things are actually progressing.

 

[crashmtb]

I realize that. I was hoping to help you understand how highly technical complex manufacturing works.

?

 

[AdamsFan1983]

I dunno gents:

The lot behind the factory ain’t empty:

 

[SeaGeo]

Let me preface this by saying my response would generally be the same as yours going off my gut. TBH, I think this just points to how little we know about the anticipated ramp-up, and how much has or hasn't changed in Rivian's opinion over the last two months.

I don’t know the specifics of the poll but you really can’t take a voluntary poll on an early adopter/enthusiast site and extrapolate from it to the general population.

You can take a reasonable guess if you can pair it to the evolution of the preorder number population. We know when people placed their preorder on the poll, and the know what have a rough idea of how many orders Rivian had at the end of 2020, and much better in 9/21, 10/21, and 12/21. The trick is adjusting for the skew. I *think* the biggest issue with the poll relative to the population at the moment is that adventure trims and explore trims are likely underpreporting on it because they don't have delivery dates. However, the 15k is adjusted for the relative number of orders that Rivian had over the month of october relative to their total, and the poll's total, and then trying to conservatively adjust for that across the entire adventure and explore trims.

Just think about it big picture. 15k is way too high. How many preorders did they have in November 2020 - 20k? No way were 75% of them converted to Launch editions, especially given the low publicity about ordering, tiny ordering window, max pack orders, people backing out, reluctance to be a “late beta” tester by taking early delivery, etc…

I actually would be surprised if the majority of the orders that took place in November *weren't* launch editions. Unless you wanted a max pack, why not do that?

IIRC the estimate was in between 20k and 30k.

Also, Rivian plans to build ~all LEs in the first half of 2022, and build some non-LE vehicles during that time as well. And they’re still ramping up production. Are they really projecting that they’ll build way more than 30k vehicles in 2022? That wouldn’t be realistic.

If you think back, their initial S-1 had them with upper 40k reservations, and the expected to fulfill them all in 2022. So 30k would be a reduction from that, and fit their final S-1 guidance reasonably closely.

And wasn’t the original plan to build all LEs in the last 4 months of 2021? They can’t have been realistically planning that if they had 15k orders.

That's one thing that we aren't totally certain about. It seemed like that, but they also said they would have them done by spring 2021. We never got a large delivery window preview like we have now, so we can't really say that with confidence.

 

[EVTrucking]

Ain’t full either. How long have they been sitting there. Probably the 266 undelivered vehicles.

 

[SeaGeo]

I dunno gents:

The lot behind the factory ain’t empty:

Ain’t full either. How long have they been sitting there. Probably the 266 undelivered vehicles.

At some point they're going to have to stop shitting them by trucks 3 to 5 at a time, right? Makes me wonder if they're intentionally sitting on some stock to reduce shipping costs with train transport.

 

[ironpig]

Various statements from Rivian and industry analysts.

40K in the first full year

150k annual capacity goal in Illinois

Tesla produced ~35k model S in their 3rd year of production. I believe that due to tech advances, industry maturation, and JR being a better, calmer, smarter, and more methodical automotive engineer than Musk, Rivian will do in the first full year what took Tesla 3 years to achieve.

no way. They Are dealing with production hell AND a supply shortage. They will be lucky to deliver 8000 trucks next year. They won’t hit 40k a year until 3rd year at earliest. They know it but they can’t say it.

 

[Guy]

no way. They Are dealing with production hell AND a supply shortage. They will be lucky to deliver 8000 trucks next year. They won’t hit 40k a year until 3rd year at earliest. They know it but they can’t say it.

Quite a bold prediction. The 8k I can see (although I still thing low five digits is feasible) by not getting to 40k until 2023 or 2024. They should be at a run rate of five thousand plus a month by end of 2023 at the latest. We will see how well your prediction ages.

Sponsored