Tick Tick Tick...

[CarterGee]

Oh hi! It's me!

They literally did that in October. Lol. Last few days of the month "it's still happening I guess guys."

Remember, Carter sold his damn 4Runner because his guide couldn't even tell him they weren't going to deliver.

Edit: Carter was November. Same deal though.

...

Again, I'm grouchy today. Sorry. Lol.

Listen, I am also starting to get grouchy. I 110% believe that they will not communicate anything to people before earnings. I'm very much still in the camp that the best thing for the company isn't always the best thing for a couple thousand reservation holders, but it is increasingly annoying. Personally, if I was in charge, I wouldn't communicate a delay ahead of earnings either. In fact, I would try to make a splash of deliveries when everyone is looking. That said, I've been without a car for a whiiiiile now.

My situation is changing a bit with some big financial moves coming up, so a delay wouldn't be the end of the world. I just... want to know a better, more specific time frame. My Guide said that the timeframe is coming to config "early this year" but that's it.

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[IPTV65]

I am sure there are many complex problems to be solved but communication with pre-order holders isn't one of them. They need to clean house on the marketing dept...or hire one...I can't tell which. Even "bad news" is better than no news!
No more fluffy videos about saving the planet and connecting people. Be a successful car manufacturer first. If you can't get your business off the ground and make it sustainable you can't deliver on your promise of a brighter "greener" future. Donating X% of nothing to save the planet is not helpful so first things first people. Communicate about the product AND deliver. No need for anything other than that at this point in my humble opinion. The only bonus right now to IPO is some level of transparency and accountability. They will have to give it kicking and screaming.

 

[SpinDoc7]

I am sure there are many complex problems to be solved but communication with pre-order holders isn't one of them. They need to clean house on the marketing dept...or hire one...I can't tell which. Even "bad news" is better than no news!
No more fluffy videos about saving the planet and connecting people. Be a successful car manufacturer first. If you can't get your business off the ground and make it sustainable you can't deliver on your promise of a brighter "greener" future. Donating X% of nothing to save the planet is not helpful so first things first people. Communicate about the product AND deliver. No need for anything other than that at this point in my humble opinion. The only bonus right now to IPO is some level of transparency and accountability. They will have to give it kicking and screaming.

“No more fluffy videos about saving the planet and connecting people…” Might not want to check the Rivian website’s latest “stories” update today, then. ?

 

[Attesan997]

Just thinking about it for a moment we're nearly at mid Feb so halfway though Q1 and no one (or at least no one who's made it known) has a confirmed delivery. This is what's known as a d*ck move in bird culture. I also agree at this point there won't be any surprises before the earnings call.

 

[IPTV65]

“No more fluffy videos about saving the planet and connecting people…” Might not want to check the Rivian website’s latest “stories” update today, then. ?

UGH!

 

[kylealden]

They are waiting until some person with an engineering background decides the truck is a 100% ready in which case we will never see retail deliveries ever

Just to be clear, you think there's a legitimate chance that Rivian has put tens of billions of dollars, enormous capital expenditures, and produced thousands of units of a vehicle that all hinges on some single mythical "truck readiness" engineer's sign off which they haven't bothered to get?

I'm not sure why we all act like this is some big surprise. We've known since well before the Normal plant was fired up that scale and logistics are the hard part. We saw Tesla almost go bankrupt because of this same part. Even assuming the R1T is perfect and no assembly line challenges, nationwide fulfillment is still a hard part. Trucks take weeks, not days, to get from assembly line to customer in the best case. And of course, the assembly line will have challenges, the supply chain does have challenges. So we should naturally expect that things will often take longer than Rivian hoped.

This may be frustrating, but it's neither unforeseeable nor existential, nor does it imply some deep lingering malaise that the company is trying to hide from us. It just means this shit is hard and involves lots of factors which confound the reliability of month-to-month predictions.

Awful lot of armchair quarterbacks around these parts.

 

[SeaGeo]

Oh hi! It's me!



Listen, I am also starting to get grouchy. I 110% believe that they will not communicate anything to people before earnings. I'm very much still in the camp that the best thing for the company isn't always the best thing for a couple thousand reservation holders, but it is increasingly annoying. Personally, if I was in charge, I wouldn't communicate a delay ahead of earnings either. In fact, I would try to make a splash of deliveries when everyone is looking. That said, I've been without a car for a whiiiiile now.

My situation is changing a bit with some big financial moves coming up, so a delay wouldn't be the end of the world. I just... want to know a better, more specific time frame. My Guide said that the timeframe is coming to config "early this year" but that's it.

Hi! If it's not obvious, when I get wound up I'm still bitter about the lack of October/November communication to you folks. lol.

I am with you, I'd try to make a bunch of deliveries like they did for employees at the end of the year.

I started the year pretty positive, and am still hopefully they'll get their Jan/Feb deliveries out. I think I was just grouchy yesterday in general, and having seen deliveries to recent hires sort of triggered me. I've been "pro" employee deliveries for various reasons, but at some point it gets a little ridiculous.

And I just don't have any confidence in Rivian to actually communicate. They keep saying they will, and they continue to not communicate.

 

[AdamsFan1983]

Hi! If it's not obvious, when I get wound up I'm still bitter about the lack of October/November communication to you folks. lol.

I am with you, I'd try to make a bunch of deliveries like they did for employees at the end of the year.

I started the year pretty positive, and am still hopefully they'll get their Jan/Feb deliveries out. I think I was just grouchy yesterday in general, and having seen deliveries to recent hires sort of triggered me. I've been "pro" employee deliveries for various reasons, but at some point it gets a little ridiculous.

And I just don't have any confidence in Rivian to actually communicate. They keep saying they will, and they continue to not communicate.

Same boat. I actually took my chances with CSS earlier this week to try to glean something new from them and had an exceptionally frusterating experience with them on chat; borderline hostile. The agent was far and away the worst I've interacted with. Went to bed that day with a very uneasy feeling about the rest of the month.

The frustration is definately building, even for the evangelists amongst us--which is why I believe they've got to start making meaningful deliveries. Even if there are a couple dozen in the last two days of february that bleed over into march, thats not gonna hack it for alot of people.

 

[AdamsFan1983]

Hi! If it's not obvious, when I get wound up I'm still bitter about the lack of October/November communication to you folks. lol.

I am with you, I'd try to make a bunch of deliveries like they did for employees at the end of the year.

I started the year pretty positive, and am still hopefully they'll get their Jan/Feb deliveries out. I think I was just grouchy yesterday in general, and having seen deliveries to recent hires sort of triggered me. I've been "pro" employee deliveries for various reasons, but at some point it gets a little ridiculous.

And I just don't have any confidence in Rivian to actually communicate. They keep saying they will, and they continue to not communicate.

Also FWIW I'm normally the one who stumbles across truck haulers carrying rivians to their final destinations and posts them here. I haven't seen any in over a week, which is somewhat concerning to me. I admit, I rely on finding those pictures on open source social media, but to not see any is strange to me.

 

[SeaGeo]

Just to be clear, you think there's a legitimate chance that Rivian has put tens of billions of dollars, enormous capital expenditures, and produced thousands of units of a vehicle that all hinges on some single mythical "truck readiness" engineer's sign off which they haven't bothered to get?

I'm not sure why we all act like this is some big surprise. We've known since well before the Normal plant was fired up that scale and logistics are the hard part. We saw Tesla almost go bankrupt because of this same part. Even assuming the R1T is perfect and no assembly line challenges, nationwide fulfillment is still a hard part. Trucks take weeks, not days, to get from assembly line to customer in the best case. And of course, the assembly line will have challenges, the supply chain does have challenges. So we should naturally expect that things will often take longer than Rivian hoped.

This may be frustrating, but it's neither unforeseeable nor existential, nor does it imply some deep lingering malaise that the company is trying to hide from us. It just means this shit is hard and involves lots of factors which confound the reliability of month-to-month predictions.

Awful lot of armchair quarterbacks around these parts.

I think that frustration here is that they don't seem to be having issues with any of the above, but are almost exclusively still sending trucks to employees.

People who can talk about the trucks, seem to say they're great. They appear to generally have pretty good builds at this point. They're delivering trucks across the Country. They're producing trucks. Why are still sending truck's to employee an employee hired this last summer or fall, and not to people who placed a pre-order for the same truck in 2018? It seems like they either have a quality issue that we are unaware of and they're denying. Or they are continuing to send trucks to employees (including recent ones) rather than third party customers because they value those deliveries more. I believe it's the latter personally.

 

[SeaGeo]

Also FWIW I'm normally the one who stumbles across truck haulers carrying rivians to their final destinations and posts them here. I haven't seen any in over a week, which is somewhat concerning to me. I admit, I rely on finding those pictures on open source social media, but to not see any is strange to me.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say you, me, @kylealden and plenty of others are generally pretty positive. That at least two of us are becoming antsy seems like not a great sign. Kyle seems pretty chill still, but if I'm short on sleep I have a feeling I'll turn into yesterday me. lol.

The end of December delivery rush had me feeling pretty positive about things. If they have an issue getting trucks on trucks, maybe have a bunch of people go pick trucks up in Normal like the employees did in December?

 

[Joninrye]

Just to be clear, you think there's a legitimate chance that Rivian has put tens of billions of dollars, enormous capital expenditures, and produced thousands of units of a vehicle that all hinges on some single mythical "truck readiness" engineer's sign off which they haven't bothered to get?

I'm not sure why we all act like this is some big surprise. We've known since well before the Normal plant was fired up that scale and logistics are the hard part. We saw Tesla almost go bankrupt because of this same part. Even assuming the R1T is perfect and no assembly line challenges, nationwide fulfillment is still a hard part. Trucks take weeks, not days, to get from assembly line to customer in the best case. And of course, the assembly line will have challenges, the supply chain does have challenges. So we should naturally expect that things will often take longer than Rivian hoped.

This may be frustrating, but it's neither unforeseeable nor existential, nor does it imply some deep lingering malaise that the company is trying to hide from us. It just means this shit is hard and involves lots of factors which confound the reliability of month-to-month predictions.

How come you can state all of this but Rivian can’t? Your sentiments aren’t wrong but they are a version of the same old arguments and apologies that people have been making for Rivian for months.

The frustration comes from the lack of guidance and communication from Rivian. It borders on the disrespectful to miss a promised timeframe with no notification to the customer.

No amount of supply shortages, Covid etc prevents a company from treating its customers with even a minimum amount of respect.

 

[Ripped]

Yeah, it's taking a long time, but there are certainly no competitive options out there -Yet-
Until there are, I'll wait.
I'd rather see a number of units on the road, debugging and working out growing pains.
I also need to test drive the vehicle before confirming.

A year or longer from now gives competitors a chance to gain ground and climb up the delivery ladder. Unfortunately, what other automakers lack in software and programming, they are more skilled at logistics, assembly and production.

Being a consumer, I am not in the least bit worried.
Being a Rivian production executive, I'd be concerned, unless there are some stellar happenings behind the scenes. This is a missed opportunity to get a leg-up on everyone else.

 

[Guy]

Just to be clear, you think there's a legitimate chance that Rivian has put tens of billions of dollars, enormous capital expenditures, and produced thousands of units of a vehicle that all hinges on some single mythical "truck readiness" engineer's sign off which they haven't bothered to get?

I'm not sure why we all act like this is some big surprise. We've known since well before the Normal plant was fired up that scale and logistics are the hard part. We saw Tesla almost go bankrupt because of this same part. Even assuming the R1T is perfect and no assembly line challenges, nationwide fulfillment is still a hard part. Trucks take weeks, not days, to get from assembly line to customer in the best case. And of course, the assembly line will have challenges, the supply chain does have challenges. So we should naturally expect that things will often take longer than Rivian hoped.

This may be frustrating, but it's neither unforeseeable nor existential, nor does it imply some deep lingering malaise that the company is trying to hide from us. It just means this shit is hard and involves lots of factors which confound the reliability of month-to-month predictions.

Awful lot of armchair quarterbacks around these parts.

Yes manufacture and deliveries are hard. Rivian late last year gave dates, they knew (or should of) the challenges involved, the pandemic etc. So is it not fair to hold them to commitments they gave a few months back?
I agree with Seageo about the apparent continued bias to employee deliveries. Someone started in November 2021 and already has a subsidized truck - that is ridiculous. In six months time, sure but not now.

 

[therealhoff]

Pre-ordered in March 2019. I'm trying not to be pessimistic and believe if Rivian is making deliveries to employees and not to pre-order holders, it's because the velocity of issues with the vehicles found in the field by employees at this moment would provide a poor initial ownership experience and overwhelm their fledgling repair and support network. There is likely some baseline of quality they have to hit in terms of day 1 issues before they can consider end customer deliveries. So, I hope they sort out whatever is preventing them from ramping up customer deliveries soon and get the pipeline open, however small. In other news, have a Lightning, Cybertruck and Fisker preorder so heads up Rivian, first in wins. In a practical sense though, I hope Rivian wins. Lightning would be fine but that truck is pretty huge. Cybertruck....yeah. Fisker is kind of a "hail mary" but the Ocean is visually appealing. I just hope a viable option shows up this year. I'm not buying another ICE vehicle and I want a truck.

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