Rivian: A Perfectly Good Company, Mostly

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Now, Rivian. A curious beast, isn’t it? Currently wallowing in a bit of a pickle, financially speaking – a sea of red ink, more like a particularly messy raspberry jam. Most sensible folk are steering clear, muttering about “losses” and “burn rate” – dreary words, those. But sensible folk rarely make a proper pudding, do they? This company, purveyor of rather large electric contraptions, is perpetually declared to be on the brink. An excellent time, then, to take a closer look.

What IS this Rivian, Exactly?

Rivian builds motorized boxes for hauling things and people. Electric ones, naturally. They’ve decided, quite sensibly I think, that big vehicles – the sort Americans adore, even if they only use them to pootle to the shops – are a good place to start. They’re aiming, you see, to be the Tesla of…well, things bigger than Teslas. A perfectly reasonable ambition, as long as you don’t mind being compared to a rather overhyped electric carriage maker.

Breaking into the car-making game is fiendishly difficult, like trying to sneak a biscuit past a particularly watchful grandmother. Every enormous, lumbering car company is scrambling to build electric versions of their existing metal boxes, and it’s dreadfully expensive. Old Man Tesla showed it could be done, but he had the field all to himself then. Now it’s a proper scrum.

Surprisingly, Rivian Hasn’t Fallen Flat on Its Face

Despite all the gloom and doom, and the general expectation of spectacular failure, Rivian has actually managed to do quite a lot of things right. It hasn’t been a smooth upward swoop, of course. Businesses rarely are. They wobble and jiggle and occasionally threaten to catapult into the nearest ditch. But overall…well, they haven’t burst into flames, which is a start.

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They’ve even managed to sell some actual, functioning vehicles. A chummy deal with Amazon – a truly enormous, slightly unsettling shop – gave them a good shove in the right direction. And now they’re attempting to sell these same boxes to ordinary blighters. However, the real excitement is brewing with their shiny new creation on the consumer front.

build something people can actually afford. More vehicles mean spreading the costs, like buttering a larger slice of toast. The hope, naturally, is to become properly, sustainably profitable. Sounds a bit like what Old Man Tesla did, doesn’t it?

Rivian is Nearly There…Almost.

So, Rivian might be on the verge of something interesting. They’re aiming to start building these R2s in 2026. And they have a rather clever secret weapon: Volkswagen, a colossal German car-making machine. Volkswagen is shoveling money at Rivian, hoping to pilfer some of their clever technology for their own vehicles. A rather brazen move, if you ask me. Another billion dollars just landed, courtesy of Volkswagen, to help with the R2.

And yet, Wall Street is largely yawning. Quite right, too, in a way. It’s a losing start-up, battling giants. A “show me” attitude is perfectly reasonable. But for those with a slightly mischievous streak, a fondness for the underdog, and a strong stomach, the stock is currently rather…cheap. Down 90% from its peak, despite all this tentative success. Get in now, before the hordes descend, and you might just reap the rewards when the R2 launches. The chances of that happening, I suspect, increase with each passing quarter. It is a particularly intriguing situation. A tasty little morsel, if you will. 🤔

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2025-08-01 11:12