Rivian CEO issues strong statement about people who purchase gas-powered cars: ‘Sort of like building a horse barn in 1910’::“I don’t think I would have believed it.”
Haven’t read the article yet, but the quote irks me. I live in a home built in 1920 by a rural “house doctor” with a barn and stalls and all that jazz. Electric may be the future, but gas cars will still be around a while. The same way horses didn’t immediately disappear from rural areas when cars became affordable.
I’m not currently in the market for a truck and I don’t know much about Rivian. Now I know for sure, based on this alone, I will never buy a Rivian vehicle. I used to consider buying a Tesla as well, but won’t for similar reasons.
I wouldn’t go buying a VW group, Ford, GM and probably others then for their penchant to kill or poison people for profit.
It’s important to read the full quote from Rivian’s CEO before complaining about $75k electric trucks:
“I think the reality of buying a combustion-powered vehicle … is sort of like building a horse barn in 1910,” he said. “Imagine buying a Chevy Suburban in 2030 … what are you going to do with that … in 10 years?”
He’s comparing buying a Rivian truck with buying a Suburban, which has a base price of $57k for the lowest tier configuration (LS) and a $76k price on the High Country configuration.
Proof that very few read the article
It’s still a fair complaint though. What about those of us who can’t afford to spend $75,000 on a car?
You can get a chevy bolt for $20-$22k. Considering that is near the bottom end of a good condition car these days, that is “affordable” for many people. And you can get a used one for $15-17k
Sure, let me just fork over 80k for a truck from a company that’s been building cars for only a couple of years.
My next vehicle will likely be electric, but right now my wife and I have decent cars that still run, and are paid for, and I’m reluctant to waste money replacing something that still works.
I’m on a diesel and the emission zones in the UK are making it more challenging to own one. That said it has 750 miles range, 4 wheel drive, a station wagon, can actually tow stuff without halfing that range and can fill it up anywhere in minutes. It suits my lifestyle perfectly.
That and it cost me £2600… I wonder what electric car I could get for that.
I think you’re looking at electric bikes rather than cars for that money.
Haha exactly it’s crazy
80k and it cuts my carbon emissions by less than half. Which might be washed out completely when you consider that a Rivian weighs over 2x what my car weighs.
Electric is the future. But it is a boutique luxury right now. A compact ICE is probably just about as good a choice for the climate as a electric mega truck. Call me back in five years.
Considering any new electric cars you buy would have to be made from materials mined and processed, manufactured into a vehicle and then shipped long distances before it even gets to you, keeping your existing car and maintaining it well is possibly better for the environment when the entire life cycle is considered.
While true for most devices.
With cars there is a big secondhand market.
Any new car added at the top trickles down and removes a polluting heap of junk at the bottom.
In 1910 the Model T had already been in production for 2 years. Remember that the Model T was designed to be cheap, so that every American could afford one.
If anything, this is more like buying a horse (not building a barn) in the “Horseless Carriage” era of the late 1800s. It was an era when cars basically looked like horse-drawn carriages but without the horses. Everything was custom-manufactured, and it was expensive. You could maybe see that these “horseless carriages” were the future, but they were still pretty impractical for the present. The world still had infrastructure only for horses, and not horseless carriages.
And yeah, if you were rich enough you might want to do your part to get rid of the major pollution problem of the day – streets absolutely filled with horse shit. But, that didn’t mean it was necessarily a practical idea to be one of the first to jump on the bandwagon.
My last car purchase was £8650 for a 1L petrol from 2016. And I bought it this year.
If he could direct me to the nearest electric car of the same price and range I’d be happy to buy one, until then it’s a stupid comment and ICE are going to be here for a LONG time, purely because not everyone can afford expensive vehicles.
What he actually meant to say was:
“I’ve got my head so far up my ass that I think everybody should be spending $100k+ on a truck regardless of their need or financial circumstances. I’m also incapable of doing my job, which is why my company can’t produce enough units, even though it’s largely a solved supply chain problem. This is how I cope with my shitty existence on this planet.”
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Electric vehicles are the future of cars, but it will mean an entire extra class of people who will be cut off from car ownership.
And they’re not going to like it.
The only people who will be cut off are the petrol junkies.
EV’s are getting cheaper by the minute, and the second hand market is growing intensely.
How much does it cost to repair a fender bender on a Suburban? Cus on an R1S, well…
$42,000 rear bumper
Yikes! Are you supposed to just throw the truck away when someone hits it?
In my state the minimum legal auto insurance coverage is something like $25k per vehicle. So it’s very possible, at least here, that your rivian gets a parking lot bump from Jim-Bob in his 30 year old Civic, and his insurance just won’t cover it. And if he’s driving around in a car that’s old enough to run for congress that’s covered by minimum liability, Jim-Bob probably doesn’t have any money you could sue him for. I doubt they would garnish wages over a traffic accident, either.
Insurance and parking are two deeply costly aspects of subsidizing roads and cars over mass transit that simply aren’t accounted for. Imagine thinking an effecient industrialized society would have strip malls and cars.
The infrastructure just isn’t there yet. If you live in apartments, where will you charge it? Can the overall electrical grid handle the load if let’s say 50% of people that own an electrical car? How do these cars do in extreme weather conditions? How much does it cost to repair them? How long will they last for? EVs are super expensive.
We can’t even decide on a standard charging port.
While I will eventually get an EV, there are problems that need to be addressed still.
Tesla has ton of quality issues and riven is brand new. Why would I trust them?
– a friend of mine just got a Tesla, despite living in a townhouse where he can’t charge. He goes out to charge on weekends, similarly to how he fills the tank in his gasoline car. It’s not as convenient or cheap as being able to just plug in, but it is a reasonable thing to do
— how do you think apartments and condo complexes will get charging infrastructure? It won’t just appear and landlords/associations have no incentive to spend the money. The only way this happens is when EV adoption gets wide enough for them to see they’re losing money without it
— who cares about a charging port? Adapters are cheap
— Tesla’s quality issues are old news, that I don’t think is true anymore. Yes, they had issues scaling up, and discovering what other car companies already knew about mass manufacturing, but I believe they worked it out and are more similar to other manufacturers
— Tesla may dominate th EV market in the US, but every car company has an EV, with dozens more models coming ou in the next year or two. If you don’t like Tesla’s try something else. Personally I’m not sure I can afford a Tesla but an interested in seeing whether GM can deliver on their announced pricing for Equinox and Blazer
– a friend of mine just got a Tesla, despite living in a townhouse where he can’t charge. He goes out to charge on weekends, similarly to how he fills the tank in his gasoline car. It’s not as convenient or cheap as being able to just plug in, but it is a reasonable thing to do
It only seems reasonable until you take a step back to consider the bigger picture, which is that areas zoned for townhouses ought to be walkable. The fact that he even wants a car – electric or otherwise – to begin with shows that something went very, very wrong in the design of the entire neighborhood.
something went very, very wrong in the design of the entire neighborhood
Several things went very very wrong ….
The context is the Boston metro area. We do have pretty good transit, for the US. Most towns are old for the US and built up long before cars, so do have walkable centers with higher density housing ….
So they built this complex in a swamp, oriented around cars, not walkable to anywhere. Exits on a main road that doesn’t even have sidewalks. And somehow for a car oriented development, it’s in an area without decent roads, so it’s not even easy to drive anywhere … and the complex is a black hole in the map of high speed internet: the only part of town not served by fiber
And somehow for a car oriented development, it’s in an area without decent roads, so it’s not even easy to drive anywhere …
It’s almost never easy to drive anywhere car-oriented (except rural areas): too many cars get in the way! What’s more, this is true no matter how “decent” the roads are, due to induced demand. The way to make it easy to drive is to provide alternatives so that the other folks use them and thus get out of the way.
The infrastructure just isn’t there yet. If you live in apartments, where will you charge it?
You’re right, but not in the way you think.
The real issue is that if you live in an apartment, you shouldn’t need or want a car to begin with. The fact that so many people seem to think they do is a gigantic flashing neon clue that we’ve fucked up the zoning code and managed to build the apartments wrong in such a way that they’re not in a walkable area despite being dense.
The infrastructure change we need is to be ripping out the parking lots, not installing EV chargers in them!
There are places where this is just not possible. I live in very hot climate and people would be dying all the time due to heat exhaustion and dehydration if this was the case. I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but you can’t simply say, fuck cars. It doesn’t work this way everywhere. I would say that public transportation needs to be greatly improved upon and invested in though.
I’ve lived in places where I don’t need a car and it’s great and shitty. I’ve lived in places where you do need a car and it’s great and shitty. I’ve lived in places that have great transportation and it’s hot, but again, it’s great and shitty. There are trade-offs with whatever you go with. I do agree that we should focus more on better zoning and better public transportation.
There are places where this is just not possible. I live in very hot climate and people would be dying all the time due to heat exhaustion and dehydration if this was the case.
You say that as if cities in hot climates didn’t exist before cars.
You’re totally right. The world hasn’t been getting hotter due to climate change and people didn’t use horses. How could I forget.
I point out that a hot climate isn’t an excuse for driving instead of walking or biking and your bullshit takeaway is to insinuate that I’m some kind of climate change denier? Fuck all the way off with that!
Congratulations, that nonsense you’ve written is the most bad-faith reach I’ve read in a while.
The UK was replacing their old streetlights with LED, which frees up a lot of electricity.
And at the same time put chargers in every street pole they replaced.
Those apartments can charge there.
Oh, and you get to change your battery in 3 years for $20k because it’s worn out.
There are some big problems that get glossed over that you learn about when you own one, unless you’ve done enough research to know when people are blowing sunshine up your ass.
I don’t know where you got that info from but that is certainly not the norm… There are Tesla cabs in Vegas with over a million miles, and most of these battery packs retain close to 90% of their capacity even after 10 years. I’m sure there are exceptions, but 3 years is silly.
Yes there are problems and hurdles to overcome but I’d rank that pretty low.
Our Prius lasted 12 years before we sold it, and it was still going strong. Newer batteries have improved their life expectancy. My experience makes me doubt your claim both on life expectancy and cost. A quick search estimates the (battery) cost between $2000-$4500, depending upon installation cost. We replaced the Prius with another hybrid that gives us 65 mpg/28 kpl. When infrastructure gets better, We will fully switch to electric. ICE engines really are that much more inefficient. Equivalent electrical costs are pennies per gallon. edit added: (battery)
I don’t know about that price, even used EV batteries aren’t that cheap. I just bought 43 kWh of LFP batteries for my home and they were almost $10K, and that’s less capacity than most EV batteries.
I did a search to buy Prius batteries. I remember searching for how to replace batteries years ago and downloading the instructions. There were quite a few steps because of the potential of fire, if shorted out, but otherwise was pretty straight forward.
NiMH is pretty ancient tech for batteries. These would only be relevant to that specific model, and they’re reconditioned. Search up EV CATL LFP batteries and see how much those run.
Current battery technology easily lasts 10 year. The good ones even outlast the car they are installed in.
I worried about the battery until I had this thought (and looked at the 8 year warranty ):
Phone battery, charged every night, approx 1000 charge cycles thus lasts 3 years ish.
Car battery, charged as needed maybe every 4-7 days. Approx 1000 charge cycles thus lasts 12 to 21 years. Total battery failure is something else entirely but you said “worn out”.
If you needed to charge every night it might mean short range which means cheaper battery to replace or you are doing lots of miles. My car could do 200 miles easily before recharging or up to 300 with more care. If doing 200 miles a day you are doing 73,000 miles per year so in 3 years 220,000 approx. Any car probably needs some serious work done to it after that much.
Anyway we are still bringing this tech along so I reckon either prices will drop and/or car manufacturers will make them more serviceable so you don’t need to replace the whole thing but maybe sub modules at a time.
I think the charging port thing is slowly resolving Type2/CCS seem to be winning. Most chargers I find that are relatively new support both type 2 and chademo. In a few years I don’t think you will need to consider this and if buying today I’d stick with type 2.
I also heard that since the electric grid is designed to handle peak loads, it is over specced for today’s needs and there is a lot of time during which it could be updated before we get closer to its limits. I also had these thoughts but in practice most people charge overnight when a bunch of daytime devices are off. We might not use 7kW at home during the day, but businesses use a ton of electricity during the day. AC when is hot heating when it’s cold, PCs and monitors during the day, lights even though its daytime and that is before you get to a lot of power intensive specialist equipment that isn’t used at night typically, like hospital diagnostic instruments etc etc etc.
I also wouldn’t judge everyone on Teslas track record. It is clear other car companies are going now slowly and taking more care. Rivian may be a bit different being a new comer but that is certainly true of the established manufacturers.
Maybe if the alternative to building a horse barn in 1910 was building a garage that was so expensive only like 5% of the population could afford it.
barns are still useful and valuable today. this guy is a moron! he might have said something that made sense, like buying a new horse-drawn carriage. still, didn’t it take a couple/few decades for everything to switch over to cars?
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It would be like burning coal to make the electricit…oh
Even if an EV is 100% powered by coal power plants, it would still produce 40% less Co2 per kilometer than an ICE.
ICE are just that inefficient.
If the EV was powered by 100% solar panels, that would rise to 90% less Co2 per kilometer.
And before you start with “EVs are more polluting to produce”, know that EV’s still would pollute less than an ICE after about 25 000km.
Most cars easily drive 4 times that in their lifetime.
😍
Got any links to support these claims? I’d be interested to know more for when people bring up the same argument as the person you’re replying to.
Not OP but searched up EE’s video on a topic like this. Been a long while since I watched it so I don’t remember much about it in description is the sources. So at the very least you can check some of that type of stuff.
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=_i0p3AQftvmqXcal
But yeah in general an ICE is horrendous at efficiency vs electric. An ICE blows some 70+% of its energy on making heat we don’t use but instead actively use some of the available energy made to cool it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/6RhtiPefVzM?si=_i0p3AQftvmqXcal
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Yeah, so, how much is one of those Rivian trucks, exactly?
$73,000?
Yeah, fuck off. That’s more than the median annual gross income for American workers. It’s all good and well to tout a slightly more sustainable form of transportation–still not nearly as sustainable as busses or trains!–but when you’re pricing it well outside what most people can rationally afford, you’re not helping the situation.
and it’s only $40,000 to repair a bumper dent! such value!
https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivian-r1t-fender-bender-turns-into-42000-repair-bill
Average transaction price for a new vehicle in the U.S. is already at $48k. Plenty of electric models are below the average price by now.
The fact is, if you’re considering buying a new car, you’re already on the richer side. So this message is mainly aimed at those richer Americans considering a $73,000 F-150, that they might want to consider a $73,000 Rivian instead.
Even in that instance the Lightning is a better deal.
Ah, because the only EVs in the market are Rivian ones.
That’s true but you have to consider how much of the car market is made up of used cars. When I was last shopping for cars (4 years ago) there were hardly any EVs in my budget and the ones that were, were 10 year old Priuses. Most people frankly don’t have the income to buy anything more than a gas car. (Market for EVs may have changed since my experience). The way I see it is the CEO is making a good point while also shitting on poor people.
The first response from Google shows me several late model used Nissan Leafs for around $15k. Those didn’t have much range but plenty for most people’s day to day
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I believe that from his comment (“what are you going to do with that in 10 years”), he was implying buying new cars. I see nothing odd in buying used ICE cars, but I wouldn’t dish out for a new one at this point.
Now if you buy a used car for 10k now, you’ll probably have a harder time getting value out of it in 10 years vs. EV.
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Not only the cost, but there’s also the issue of infrastructure. I as well as many others in my city don’t have a garage and park either on the street or on a parking pad in the alley. I wouldn’t imagine a power cord running to a vehicle lasting very long because of the scrap prices of copper. We’ve got a long ways to go.
All these products have to come to market in order for prices to eventually come down. People need to see that they have viable options to gasoline cars.
In Norway, more than 80 percent of new cars sold are electric. There are many other options that don’t cost $73,000. Rivian is just one option.
IIRC, Norway also offered substantial tax incentives to people that bought electric cars. IIRC, the fed. gov’t did the same in the US, and car companies responded by raising prices by the amount of the incentive.
Selling $80k electric cars and making comments like this is sort of like saying ‘let them eat cake’ in 1780
Those trucks/SUVs weigh 8500lbs. Since there is no fuel tax being collected, these monsters are destroying the roads and not contributing to their upkeep. My city is passing laws to significantly increase the registration on these vehicles, according to their annual mileage. I’m all for going electric, but an 8500lb truck is not helping the environment.
2023 F150 weighs between 4,021 to 5,740 lbs, just as a reference point. All electric vehicles weigh significantly more than their ICE counterparts
This is true, but fuel taxes are very low. Most states that are charging an EV “road maintenance fee” (with whatever phrasing they select) are charging way more than an ICE vehicle would contribute in fuel taxes. And while it is true that BEVs are heavier than ICE vehicles, all else held equal, and that road wear and tear is strongly dependent on weight… as I recall reading, the overwhelming majority of road wear and tear is the result of freight trucks and similar vehicles.
I’m all for going electric, but an 8500lb truck is not helping the environment.
The issue here isn’t that it’s an EV in this case. It’s that it’s a truck. I’d wager than >95% of people buying trucks in the US would be perfectly served by a four door sedan or comparable sized vehicle. Trucks have largely become expensive vanity items to act as an external signal of a person’s cultural identity. Contractors and similar that actually use a truck for truck purposes still exist, but they’re comically outnumbered by people buying trucks for no good reason.
My city doesn’t allow big trucks on our roads. The wear and tear of roads is heavily dependent on weight, as you and I both stated. Weighing 3500lbs more (the weight of a Toyota Camry) than even the largest personal vehicle is a problem which I hope they solve soon.
I’m not sure why people think it’s propaganda that EVs weigh 1.5x or more than a standard sedan. It’s a fact, and it’s easy to find information. The tech crowd wants to call anything that hurts their opinion bullshit, but they refuse to look it up. It’s right there on the manufacturers’ websites. I sincerely doubt the owners of Rivian or Tesla are in on some government “propaganda” to lower their own sales.
I appreciate the votes. That proves you read the comment but have no idea how to respond, because you can’t.
My conservative neighbor drives an F-150 (~5,500 lbs) and his wife drives a Tahoe (~5,800 lbs). But he had the gall to complain to me last week about the weight of my Model Y (4,400 lbs). It’s amazing what a little bit of oil and gas propaganda has been able to accomplish.
I don’t think it’s propaganda that EVs are heavy as shit for their size. Automakers are really upfront on that fact. You trying to call it propaganda illustrates your bad faith argument. You’re misusing that word and diluting the meaning.
4400 vs 5800 isn’t much of a difference, considering the sizes of the vehicles you listed. You are essentially driving a midsize truck but without the utility of a truck. Your neighbor has two trucks to your one. The top trim Tacoma weighs the same as your lower tier Tesla. Tesla Model X Standard Range comes in at 5,185 pounds.
I think we can both agree your vehicle is extremely heavy for being a small, low/mid tier passenger vehicle. Some Teslas are not eligible for the $7500 tax credit because they weigh so much.
I like how you can’t respond to this. It really hammers home my argument and calling you on your bullshit. Thank you for the votes, because that means I know you read the comment but have no idea how to respond!
If you read the article you’d see that he said that in the context of buying a Chevy Suburban in 2030. Suburbans start at $77k, so I don’t think his comment is that out of line.
That context is great, but I haven’t seen any articles about the Chevy CEO saying such astoundingly tone deaf shit. 🤔 maybe the price isn’t what’s inflammatory.
It’s not, of course it’s not.
But we know that legacy Reddit users never even bothered to read the articles anyway. Hurray! I missed-- not.
I usually dont bother to read articles, because they are seo garbage. I glance at top comments written by true people to verify info instead
Yeah but it’s still a fair comment because the cars are too expensive for anyone to buy The battery compared to another car that’s too expensive to buy doesn’t really make any difference.
Because the thing about expensive gas powered cars is there’s also not expensive gas powered cars. So he’s comparing expensive electric cars to variable price gas powered cars.
Wait wait wait, you mean theres more to this story than the title?
Shooketh.
Bruh I can’t even afford a EV.
Cant afford a horse either. Double screwed.
Definitely can’t afford a horse 😞
Horses are cheap; horses you can ride are expensive.
