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Diddy123

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Ugh - the bad news just keeps hitting.

https://www.reuters.com/business/au...jobs-amid-price-war-internal-memo-2023-02-01/

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Rivian Automotive (RIVN.O) is laying off 6% of its workforce in an effort to cut costs as the EV maker, already grappling with falling cash reserves and a weak economy, braces for an industry-wide price war.

The company is focusing resources on ramping up vehicle production and reaching profitability, Chief Executive R.J. Scaringe said in an email to employees on Wednesday announcing the job cuts. Reuters obtained a copy of the email.


Layoffs at Rivian come amid falling EV prices kicked off by cuts made recently by Elon Musk-led Tesla (TSLA.O) and Ford Motor Co (F.N).


The price cuts by Tesla and Ford are expected to hurt EV upstarts such as Rivian, Lucid Group (LCID.O) and British startup Arrival , which Monday said it would lay off half its staff.

Despite a blockbuster initial public offering in November 2021, Rivian's shares have fallen nearly 90% from their peak that month to Tuesday's close.

"We must focus our resources on ramp and our path to profitability," Scaringe said in the email, in which he apologized to employees for the necessity of the cuts.

A Rivian spokesman confirmed the email was sent, but declined further comment.

Rivian is focusing on ramping up production of its R1 trucks and EDV delivery vans for top shareholder Amazon.com (AMZN.O), and launching its R2 platform, he said. "The changes we are announcing today reflect this focused roadmap."

Irvine, California-based Rivian, which has about 14,000 employees, will let go of about 840 staff in a move that will not affect manufacturing operations at its plant in Normal, Illinois.

Rivian, which has been losing money on every vehicle it builds, narrowly missed its full-year production target of 25,000 vehicles last year as it dealt with supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It had previously halved that target.

To further conserve its cash, Rivian late last year shelved plans to build delivery vans in Europe with Mercedes (MBGn.DE). Rivian had earlier pushed back by a year to 2026 the planned launch of a smaller R2 vehicle family at the $5 billion plant it is building in Georgia.

Last July, Rivian, which is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 28, laid off staff and suspended some programs as part of a broader restructuring.

As of Sept. 30, 2022, the automaker reported having $13.27 billion in cash and cash equivalents, down from over $18 billion a year earlier.
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DuoRivians

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The price cut “war” seems more coincidental than the cause for workforce reduction. Cutting costs is probably the number one reason.

That is, even without the price cuts, Rivian probably would have laid off people anyway. Some people left earlier in Jan (before price cuts by Tesla).
 

jjswan33

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Bummer. Not a good time to be a tech worker and saying that as a tech worker.

We just got hit with a 5% pay cut yesterday, those who got a severance and left got a better deal IMO. For a company like Rivian I think cutting staff is the better idea, that way you retain and reward your high performers.
 

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Honey

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They need to cut their community engagement/customer service because they are useless. They need a redo.
 

kylealden

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Cut the software team. They have the highest salaries.
Given that most owner wishlists are 90% software requests, this seems like an odd proposal.
 

DJG

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Cut the bottom 6% under the guise of the "economy" and backfill/upgrade with the abundance of tech talent on the market. The auto industry will be a big winner from this tech purge.
 

DJG

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Considering it took them over a year to add one new media app that's not even in the top 3 of market share they aren't pulling their weight.
That might hold water if that were the only thing they were doing over the past year. You conveniently ignore everything else to support your hidden agenda and it's pathetic.
 

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fotoflux

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Considering it took them over a year to add one new media app that's not even in the top 3 of market share they aren't pulling their weight.
because they are focusing on table stakes like adding features like garage door opening ability. There is a lot to do to get to parity with competition. Believe me, it would be worse if they fired SW engineers.
 

astonius

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That might hold water if that were the only thing they were doing over the past year. You conveniently ignore everything else to support your hidden agenda and it's pathetic.
Yes, I really try to hide my agenda, clearly from my post history... :rolleyes:

I'm also an investor, so I would like to see a return on my money.
 

Rblue

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Considering it took them over a year to add one new media app that's not even in the top 3 of market share they aren't pulling their weight.
This seems like a narrow vision of what the software team is responsible for, and a metric that isn't indicative of a software team's overall performance
 

kylealden

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Considering it took them over a year to add one new media app that's not even in the top 3 of market share they aren't pulling their weight.
OK. You don't know what you are talking about 🙂

FWIW it's pretty likely that Rivian's software team is pretty small. And media apps should justifiably be pretty far down their list behind things like idle power consumption (which has seen major improvements), drive efficiency (which has seen major improvements), drive modes (which have seen major improvements), security features & fundamentals (which have seen major improvements), and so on.

I've owned a Tesla for five years and from where I'm sitting Rivian's software has moved faster and with higher quality than Teslas, which is leagues ahead of everyone else. Tesla still can't reliably launch the sentry viewer or media apps without crashing and frequently reboots the entire UI while driving (something my Rivian has never done in 10,000 miles).

I wouldn't be surprised if software did get cuts. Totally unsourced guess would be in ways that disproportionately impact fleet & membership.
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