A Look at Rivian’s Future: Will They Be Tesla’s Biggest Competitor?

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Shortly after the announcement of Rivian and Volkswagen’s joint venture, Rivian hosted a short, impromptu investor call to discuss a few key items. If you want to listen to the call yourself, you’ll need to provide a few short pieces of information at this link. The day after, on the 27th of June, Rivian held its Investor Day.

Let’s dive into all the awesome stuff that was unveiled by Rivian during the call and during Investor Day itself.

Volkswagen Investment

The first item on the list was of course the announcement of the joint venture with Volkswagen. The call confirmed that VW will be providing that $1B initial investment, alongside the $4B planned for 2025 and onwards.

Rivian has said that it intends to use this investment to focus on the Rivian R2 ramp at its Normal, Illinois factory, as well as develop its upcoming facility in Georgia. They also confirmed that they will be providing software and ECU (electronic control units) hardware for Volkswagen EVs going forward, which will be based on the R2 or R3 platforms.

The companies will be sharing the responsibility of the joint venture corporation, and Rivian and Volkswagen will each appoint one co-CEO. If you’re interested in the details of how the Joint Venture and the investment work, we highly recommend you listen to the call.

New Vehicles, New Platforms

Rivian also showed off a slide quite similar to Tesla’s slide at its Shareholder Meeting – with 5 vehicles under the wraps. Of note is the updated R1 Gen 2 platform has a new vehicle, which looks similar to the R1S Suburban Edition that has been previously teased. The R2/R3 platform also has a smaller vehicle in its lineup, which looks similar to a wagon or hot hatch. Finally, the “Affordable Mass Market” platform has a full-size SUV, as well as a smaller SUV and what could be a sedan.

All in all, Rivian has some exciting news to look forward to, with the Joint Venture serving as both a lifeline and an opportunity for Rivian to push towards more affordable mass-market vehicles, which will help cement them as an affordable EV brand.

Rivian's Investor Day Slide
Rivian's Investor Day Slide
Not a Tesla App

New Battery Pack and Bi-Directional Charging

Another major update for Rivian’s platforms – including the Gen 2 R1 series and R2/R3 platform, is an updated battery pack. This updated pack is structural – and has greatly reduced the cost of the structural components by approximately 50%, which is a massive improvement. Rivian will be using 4695 cells in their updated pack, similar to Tesla’s 4680 cells. These cell sizes are easier and cheaper to manufacture but cooling them has been difficult – even for Tesla. This difficulty in cooling has resulted in reduced maximum charge rates, but Tesla has recently had some drastic improvements in this field.

Every Rivian vehicle already supports the V2H/V2L vehicle-to-home/vehicle-to-load protocols from CCS, but it has thus far been disabled. Rivian will be introducing a bidirectional charger for V2H, alongside a software update to unlock the functionality on all previous Rivian vehicles.

Electronics and the Maximus Motor

A key portion of Volkswagen’s investment is also access to Rivian’s new electronics – the Zonal controllers. Rivian has built a zone-based ECU that controls various parts of the vehicle in centralized locations – resulting in their Gen 2 platform having 60% fewer ECUs, a 1.6-mile reduction in cable harness length, and a 44lb weight reduction.

These are some pretty impressive numbers and are a great step towards Rivian moving towards scaling mass production of their vehicle platforms.

Of course, it's not just the battery and electronics – Rivian’s in-house motor has received an update, with a 30% cost savings and a 30% reduction in labor per unit for their single-motor-per-axel motor variant. This motor will be going onwards to replace the Enduro and will be the primary drive unit for the R2 and R3 vehicles.

Rivian Spaces, Shop, and the Rivian Adventure Network

Rivian’s sales fronts are known as Rivian Spaces – genuinely a place to get to see a vehicle, hear about it from a Rivian salesperson, and learn about all its features. Spaces have generally been sparsely located – with just 12 open today in 2024, and just 2 open last year.

To address this, Rivian plans a drastic expansion of its Spaces, with 40+ being opened throughout 2024 and 2025. This is going to be Rivian’s big step towards bringing their vehicles to the mass market, and away from the specialty consumers that they target today.

The Rivian Shop will also be receiving plenty of updates – alongside the newly launched shop UI. This will include a dedicated platform for selling pre-owned Rivians, including lease returns.

The Rivian Adventure Network will be opening to the public this summer, which means non-Rivian vehicles will be able to charge there soon for the first time. Rivian has committed to expanding the RAN and aims to fill “charging deserts” that it locates through ABRP.

Rivian previously adopted NACS as a standard and is expected to begin producing vehicles with NACS built-in soon, so we could expect the RAN to also use NACS plugs soon.

Service Centers and Service

Beyond the expansion of Spaces, Rivian currently has 59 service centers open today and aims to have 100+ service centers through 2025. This is a pretty big increase, and Rivian also mentions that it intends to have Rivian Mobile Service be able to reach customers who aren’t near a Service Center.

They intend for their service centers to remain fairly small, with roughly a 50% smaller footprint than other comparables, as approximately 70% of their work orders are completed via mobile service. This is fairly similar to Tesla’s approach with their large-footprint Collision Centers located centrally, and smaller Service Center/Delivery Center combinations spread throughout major cities. Tesla has previously mentioned that approximately 80% of their service orders can be completed by a mobile technician, and Rivian is very similar.

Rivian plans to introduce an AI chat system that can pull vehicle logs and data, as well as known defects to help assist Rivian owners and customers with service requests before they need to speak to an agent. The AI will be able to schedule service appointments, and can even suggest routine maintenance, such as tire rotations. This service will be arriving for Rivian’s commercial vehicle platforms first – the EDV and ECV.

Visit Rivian Wave to stay up to date on the latest Rivian news and software updates.

Tesla Plans CyberCanopy Supercharger with RGB Lighting and UFO-Inspired Design

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Back in 2023, Tesla put together a rather unique Supercharger site idea - one with a CyberCanopy. This canopy is intended to provide solar power for Supercharging, helping to reduce the impact on the local grid while also providing a futuristic and Cybertruck-themed location that would set it apart.

Unfortunately, the plans never moved beyond the filing stage. Instead, Tesla opened a standard-looking Supercharger at the same Canton, Massachusetts location. However, the site is still well-situated just off the highway and benefits from natural tree cover in the parking area.

However, Tesla is at it again with a concept for another CyberCanopy with RGB lighting. Thanks to MarkoRP for spotting this. No April Fool’s this time.

We want to build a few Superchargers cool enough to be worthy of the trip itself. - Max de Zegher

CyberCanopy 2

This second Supercharger with CyberCanopy is set for Roswell, New Mexico, at the Whataburger in town. Featuring just eight stalls, this will be one of Tesla’s smaller Supercharger sites, but for what it lacks in size, it makes up for it in uniqueness. The charging stalls are covered from the rain by a futuristic, Cybertruck-themed canopy, which will have solar panels installed on the top of it.

According to the plans, the CyberCanopy boasts 20.88kW of solar panels on its roof, providing shelter from the elements while also providing some power back to the grid.

RGB Lighting

At nighttime, the Supercharger will make a big statement. Tesla intends to light the long edges of the canopy, which will not only look amazing, but it’ll actually make finding the Supercharger easier in a large parking lot.

The lighting coming off the edge of the canopy reminds us a lot of the lightbar on the Cybertruck and now the new Model Y. It’s definitely the direction Tesla is moving for all their models, so expect all future models to have it, including the new Roadster and the next-gen model.

Tesla’s Max de Zegher also took to X after the plans for the new Supercharger were found and shared the image above. He stated that Tesla wants to build a few cool Superchargers that will be worth stopping at, even if they’re out of the way a little bit. So it seems like this isn’t just a concept, but an idea that Tesla wants to expand to several areas around the country or world.

Sending Energy to the Grid

This particular site doesn't have a Megapack or other form of energy storage, unlike the upcoming Harris Ranch Supercharger site in California. That means that Tesla won’t be storing the solar energy gained from this site, but instead will be either offsetting the immediate grid impact or serving energy back to the grid when the site isn’t actively charging.

Tesla will likely be incorporating V4 Superchargers, including both V4 posts and the new, more powerful V4 Cabinets, as the permit states that Tesla will be redesigning the site internally before beginning construction. For Cybertruck owners, 500kW charging may be around the corner.

We’re hoping Tesla continues to deploy these kinds of Supercharger sites around the world - they make a stylistic statement about Tesla’s futurism, like the Shell gas station that was upcycled into a Supercharger site earlier this year in Spain.

They also make a big impact for ownership because it is a far more comfortable charging experience when you stop at a site that’s shaded from the elements - and one that’s better for the environment with offset emissions.

Imagining Tesla’s Robotaxi Network Charging Stations

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

It was a rainy April 1st when a news-searching author went on a delve into the depths of April Fools to find fact from falsehood. And while we found a lot of fantastic jokes, we also found some good ideas.

So, with a shoutout to MarcoRP on X, whose April Fool’s Joke gave us a good run for our money for a couple of minutes, we thought to ourselves - what would a Cybercab Charging Station / Cleaning Hub really look like?

Cybercab Wireless Charging Sites

Now, before continuing, we’d like to point out that the image up top is a joke from Marco - it isn’t an accurate or real site map submission from Tesla. However, it gave us the impetus to think critically about what is required for a Robotaxi fleet, based primarily on the Cybercab, to be able to service a city.

Requirements

Tesla will likely need to charge a small fleet of Cybercabs at a single time and in a single place. That means that the site needs to be large enough to cover a major metro area while also still being compact enough to not cost too much money to build out.

In addition, we need to factor in charge times. The Cybercab is likely to launch with a battery around 50 kWh, which will result in a range of approximately 300 miles. With that much range, the average Cybercab may not need to charge more than once or at all during daytime shifts, so instead, most of the vehicles will charge overnight.

MarcoRP

Math and Charge Times

The overnight charging means that most of these vehicles could be charged slowly. When we did some back-of-the-napkin math last year, we determined that Tesla’s wireless charger will likely peak around 17 kW (for comparison, Tesla’s Wall Connector at 32 amps charges at about 7 kW). If we scale Tesla’s wireless charger down slightly to 10 kW, accounting for some energy loss and the potential size of the site, that means a Cybercab will be able to charge in about 5 hours.

Tesla’s upcoming V4 Supercharger unit can currently handle 1.5MW per cabinet, but this slower-speed charging is A/C, not DC, which means there is a step-down loss of about 3-5%. Let’s make that a comfortable 10% for any other overages, but we can estimate around 1.35MW of power. That 1.3MW will easily handle charging up to 100 Cybercabs at once - all wirelessly, using Tesla’s unique beam-forming and beam-steering technology to keep efficiency high at every single stall.

Within about 5 hours, a whole fleet of 100 Cybercabs could be charged overnight when electricity rates are cheaper and still be out in time for the morning commute.

While this is all just hypothetical, it really does make sense that Tesla will be establishing these sites that won’t require much space or a ton of energy.

Tesla recently curtained off a large section of the parking garage at Giga Texas, as well as some of their chargers on the eastern end of the facility, leading us to believe they may just be testing this at scale internally.

There’s a lot to look forward to with Tesla’s V4 Supercharger deployment coming this year and with Robotaxi launching in just a couple of months.

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