2025 R2 Production

[Chrisy]

I am waiting for @R1Thor to educate OP about how scaling manufacturing works.
Looks these type of threads pop up all the time since R2 announcement was made and his definite experience in the topic must be shared over and over again

To me OP's reasoning shows SYS/SW engineer experience only, no Operations background hence the confusion what can be done and what not reasonable.

The single most important focus should be on adopting new technology in car design

I would disagree based on the phenomenon called Toyota Corolla

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[COdogman]

I'm sure Rivian is 100% doing what they can to get R2 to market ASAP. I actually appreciate their approach of underpromising and (usually) overdelivering. Creating unrealistic expectations doesn't help anyone. If they announce some imaginary month/ year for delivery and it's missed, they get hammered. If they beat it or come pretty close to their realistic date, they get a pat on the back.

If Wall Street doesn't like that, well... what else is new? Wall street is a pit of vipers trying to have it both ways - profit off of success AND failure. It's gross.

 

[mpw81]

 

[zajak1]

We are in the month of March. To deliver the first R2 to a customer in 2025 is to build one vehicle in 21 months or less. I am absolutely positive that Rivian workers can deliver one R2 to one customer in 21 months time.

The story the public and investors want to hear is about first delivery and then subsequent increases in the rate of production. That story is a late 2025 story and an exciting one! Any story about 2026 is a disappointing story.

I’m so confused by how badly the executive team has presented the delivery timeline story for R2. The story should be: “first deliveries by late 2025“.

"2026" as a word and as an idea occupies no space in the human mind whatsoever, but “next year” is something we understand and something fundamentally tied at a neurological level to feelings of optimism and excitement. Investor sentiment can be drastically swayed to be positive by having the R2 story be "first deliveries by late 2025". It does not conflict with the goal to build the machines that build the car. It does not conflict with any blocking processes related to the manufacturing line.

Also, please update the R1 story on the website to reflect the existence of R2. Highlight air suspension, capacity, quad motor, max battery, availability, etc. Differentiate it further on the R1 page in light of the newer model now being known. Understand the costs in marketing per purchase and spend to keep sales at 57k or higher. Do a special edition that is just trim and color or partnership to keep it fresh. The car looks good in two yellows, three greens, two blues, two reds, two blacks, two whites, two silvers. So offer the car with those. It is a perpetuation of logical fallacy to offer "one choice per color".

The single most important focus should be on adopting new technology in car design (build it yourself if necessary) and couple it with online market research tooling (build it yourself if necessary) to digitally iterate to the most appealing car Rivian could produce, a million or more a year automobile. Someone is going to do exactly this and I would rather it be Rivian. Set some default size parameters based on the existing R2 & R3 platforms, use no human designers (for this effort), let the ChatGPT LLM or comparable system constantly mutate on form while displaying the output to real market research participants in effective sample size until one design wins as the most desired. If you think this sounds impossible you are under informed. R1 is 50-100k a year, 200k a year if selling internationally. The R2 is 100-200k a year, 300-400k if selling internationally. The R3 is 75-150k a year, 400k internationally. The next one needs to use same platform and be a 1 million a year car. Alternatively two additional designs on the same platform that add up to 1 million additional demand. RJ should be focusing here or hire/acquire the person who can.

Build the machines that builds the machine. - Elon
Develop the software that designs the machine. - Me

If you have RJs email send him this please! Thank you!

All good points about 2025 but RJ has been bitten numerous times when he over promised and under delivered..He's learned his lesson...My bet is once the Q2 shut down is complete/successful, there is a very good chance we hear R2 is produced sometime/latter half of 2025.. Re: your other points, I doubt RIVN needs a lesson in AI, production efficiency,marketing choices etc...

 

[zajak1]

I'm sure Rivian is 100% doing what they can to get R2 to market ASAP. I actually appreciate their approach of underpromising and (usually) overdelivering. Creating unrealistic expectations doesn't help anyone. If they announce some imaginary month/ year for delivery and it's missed, they get hammered. If they beat it or come pretty close to their realistic date, they get a pat on the back.

If Wall Street doesn't like that, well... what else is new? Wall street is a pit of vipers trying to have it both ways - profit off of success AND failure. It's gross.

Couldn't agree with you more..As i just stated on a post, RJ got caught up in the overpromising thing..Wall Street analysts are notorious on being surprised and their retribution..I honestly believe they only care about being right and not about the success of a company...Adam Jonas supoprted a $78 IPO and now he has trouble at $14...sure, things have changed but not by a factor of 5.6X...c'mon man...give us all a break. The analysts have NEVER produced a thing in their lives except financial models..They are 25 year old excel jockeys ( i know first hand, i was one of them)...

 

[R1Thor]

I am waiting for @R1Thor to educate OP about how scaling manufacturing works.
Looks these type of threads pop up all the time since R2 announcement was made and his definite experience in the topic must be shared over and over again

To me OP's reasoning shows SYS/SW engineer experience only, no Operations background hence the confusion what can be done and what not reasonable.


I would disagree based on the phenomenon called Toyota Corolla

Crud, I've become 'that guy,' huh?

Well, in the interest of making more enemies (HA), I'll point you to facts, and Zoids had a pretty phenomenal rollup:
https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/...-retrofit-into-existing-r1-or-edv-line.25066/

This was his narrative regarding what would have to happen JUST TO ADAPT a production line. Now imagine what you're asking insofar as to BUILD UP a production line?

People who haven't worked in (physical) engineering have no idea how hard it is to get even SIMPLE things right. The adjustment of tolerance, tolerance stackup, building features and geometries that BY ALL MEANS should make sense, but somehow the physics doesn't workout in real life. It could take MONTHS just to get a SINGLE End Effector correct, let alone validate a particular design is actually functioning the way it needs to.

It takes TEAMS of Engineers working on concert to develop a holistic product, working on it piece by piece, and the interface between those parts is NOT trivial.

Everything looks obvious once it's already 'finished.' Do you think Rivian *designed* panel gaps into their vehicles? No. What they did was design panels *nominally* and then had to work backwards to determine how to accommodate those shortcomings due to tolerances, stackups, material springback, cold working of metals, material shrinkage, defects in workmanship, variance in singularities of the robotics, backlash in gearing of the tooling, etc etc etc (this ALONE could be a list pages long).

And notwithstanding, once everything is as close to 'right' as possible for workmanship, it takes hundreds of hours building REPEATABILITY into the process with TAKT time studies, Cpk and Ppk, product and quality updates, KPIs and QIPs to manage 'acceptance' criteria... And none of this even touches on regulations and industry standards that need followed, audited, and traced.


If you have questions, I'm happy to answer, but this could be a literal masterclass of time. We could probably do a YouTube series that spans 80+ hours and still doesn't cover most of it.

Suffice to say, individualized expectations of what it's taken me decades of a professional career to understand do not qualify either of us to be experts, but we can at least ask the right questions instead of offering arrogant and misinformed opinions to these subjects.

The speed at which Rivian is developing and anticipating to release these vehicles is ALREADY herculean-level fast. You have NO formal appreciation for that. Asking for it to happen faster is just...inane and uneducated at best.

 

[Rividiculous]

If you have questions, I'm happy to answer, but this could be a literal masterclass of time. We could probably do a YouTube series that spans 80+ hours and still doesn't cover most of it.

Looking forward to the masterclass!

 

[R1Thor]

Looking forward to the masterclass!

If you help with the production, I'll start working on the syllabus!

 

[Zoidz]

Men and months are often interchangeable commodities when a task can be partitioned among many workers.

Your comments remind me of a Fortune 50 project engineer that I worked with on a large food manufacturing facility. He was responsible for the planning/timeline and took this approach men and months are interchangeable approach. Things were behind schedule due to this type of thinking but he continued to report to the VP of engineering and the CEO that he had it all under control. with a solid plan to get back on schedule. There were about 10,000 field wire terminations to be made to the control panels. He did some math and told the electricl contractor to have 50 electricians on site in two weeks. 50 electricians showed up. There were 8 centralized control panels so that was 6 to 7 electricans per control panel. The problem? There was only room for two to three electricians to work per panel. A week later, that project engineer no longer worked for the company.

It is all highly related to systems programming, I mean it's literally robotic programming.

No it's not. It's clear to me that you have no experience in what is actually involved in building and starting up heavy manufacturing lines. Robotic programming is only 10% to 25% of what's needed to commission and start up a heavy manufacturing line.

 

[MidnightRivian]

How many shares does one have to hold in order to consider oneself an "activist investor" ?

I think it’s about 10 shares given the context of the thread.

 

[Activist_Investor]

I have more than enough shares to offer constructive advice and engage in constructive discussions. I don't know how constructive these discussions are.

If Rivian had a couple hundred workers with the same work ethic that I had for the last twenty years it would be done in under 21 months. Rivian is likely self-selective for passionate individuals who want to work hard and are hopefully invested in the success of the company.

I think R1Thor has valid examples of the unexpected problems that arise during production of a line. They add up and each one is unexpected toil and blocks some yet to be performed task.

It would appear that R1Thor and the lesser informed angst-soaked opinion of this Zoidz character is that the work that cannot be completed faster given more workers (which is always substantial) in blocking sequential order extend beyond 21 months time? Then why not just say exactly that?

As for the use of LLM, Llama 2, etc to iteratively design a vehicle while taking into account research participant perceptions of overall appeal it is technically possible. I have not seen futurist like thought from Rivian or the CEO RJ to any extent at all. I do not think it in the companies DNA to attempt to perfect the design of a vehicle through the use of modern technology, including generative AI. I see three vehicles of some regard that in sum add up to less production and sales than the Model Y. I do not think RJ is "going for it". I think we have a very well liked modern day Jeep brand that will succeed in a limited manner given the limited beliefs within their leadership team. It could be more but it is not going to be. Something as globally appreciated in style as the model y could sit atop the r2/r3 platform but will not. What a waste. Just sucks. I'll happily drive an R2 and think eventually the stock will be worth 20-40 billion but never anything remotely close to Tesla's 500 billion.

 

[R1Thor]

Throwing more people at a problem inevitably creates more problems.
Is it theoretically possible to "Science the shit out of this" and get it to market in 6 months? Probably. But it'll cost so much in R&D that the area under the curve will curse Rivian to NEVER pull positive on profit. OR, they'll be charging that amortized schedule of cost to us, and you've just netted yourself a $150k R2.

That's the last I have to say about this. It isn't a debate. It's reality. Maybe in the future it'll be 'faster,' because, well, technology gets better with time. But you're up against an insane amount of precedent and red tape even if you overcome EVERY engineering challenge between here and the first vehicle off the line.

Cheap > Fast > Good. You may pick only 2 when asking for a product. This is a hard rule.

 

[Mathme]

To keep Wall Street happy and not have the stock get slammed, Rivian - if anything - is better to under-promise (2026) and over-deliver (2025).

As others have said there's a lot of complexities in launching a new car on a new production line and it's better to not surprise the investors. The BIG thing to watch will be the quarterly earnings calls/reports as that's where any information regarding an advance/slip of the launch will likely first be made.

 

[crashmtb]

I have more than enough shares to offer constructive advice and engage in constructive discussions. I don't know how constructive these discussions are.

If Rivian had a couple hundred workers with the same work ethic that I had for the last twenty years it would be done in under 21 months. Rivian is likely self-selective for passionate individuals who want to work hard and are hopefully invested in the success of the company.

 

[fyton2v]

I'm gonna defend the OP just a tiny bit. Don't shoot me.

As a consumer, I appreciate that Rivian has a grounded leadership team. They seem honest and sincere, and they definitely don't want to be wrong. I've yet to hear a pitch that sounds even remotely like, "We'll have a functional HyperLoop tunnel to Mars by 2025!"

But as a shareholder, perhaps there is an upside to "some" optimistic dream selling with lofty goals. It may influence/improve the short to medium term stock price. The OP used a lot of words, but perhaps that's the crux of his posts.

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