Photo: BusinessInsider
After what's been a wild year, it sounds like some of the heat Rivian has generated is cooling off, and this announcement from Ford won't help. Despite a large financial stake in Rivian, Ford will now be building its own proprietary EVs.
This news comes directly after Farley, CEO of Ford, made it clear that the brand now plans on building 600,000 EVs in 2023. That's literally double their initial goal. Interestingly, Rivian wasn't mentioned in the tweet thread.
Now, we know why. Farley detailed the partnership between the two companies. "Right now, we have growing confidence in our ability to win in the electric space,... When you compare today with when we originally made that investment, so much has changed: about our ability, about the brand's direction in both cases, and now it's more certain to us what we have to do. We want to invest in Rivian — we love their future as a company — but at this point we're going to develop our own vehicles."
That sure sounds like Ford is recognizing the difference between where Rivian is and where they are. The upstart truck and SUV company might be valued at nearly twice that of Ford as a whole but Ford knows that they have more demand.
To that extent Farley also clarified Ford's stance on working with Rivian directly. "Rivian's a special case for us; it's kind of like a brother or a sister, since we're an investor...
We know [CEO RJ Scaringe] and the company really we... we have slightly different business models," he said. "We like what they're doing, but we're going to go our separate ways."
That separate way will see Ford add more battery production facilities as they aim to meet the exceptional demand they've garnered. Interestingly, Farley made a point about how Ford hasn't created this much value "since we scaled the Model T".
It seems clear that Ford recognizes the opportunity to basically do what Rivian has done but on a much bigger scale.
While there's no reason to expect the gigantic swings and upticks in value that Rivian or even Tesla have seen, the first of "the big three" to make EVs the majority of their lineup might see a big boost too.
Now, we know why. Farley detailed the partnership between the two companies. "Right now, we have growing confidence in our ability to win in the electric space,... When you compare today with when we originally made that investment, so much has changed: about our ability, about the brand's direction in both cases, and now it's more certain to us what we have to do. We want to invest in Rivian — we love their future as a company — but at this point we're going to develop our own vehicles."
That sure sounds like Ford is recognizing the difference between where Rivian is and where they are. The upstart truck and SUV company might be valued at nearly twice that of Ford as a whole but Ford knows that they have more demand.
To that extent Farley also clarified Ford's stance on working with Rivian directly. "Rivian's a special case for us; it's kind of like a brother or a sister, since we're an investor...
We know [CEO RJ Scaringe] and the company really we... we have slightly different business models," he said. "We like what they're doing, but we're going to go our separate ways."
That separate way will see Ford add more battery production facilities as they aim to meet the exceptional demand they've garnered. Interestingly, Farley made a point about how Ford hasn't created this much value "since we scaled the Model T".
It seems clear that Ford recognizes the opportunity to basically do what Rivian has done but on a much bigger scale.
While there's no reason to expect the gigantic swings and upticks in value that Rivian or even Tesla have seen, the first of "the big three" to make EVs the majority of their lineup might see a big boost too.
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