Rivian teases five new cars, but I don’t know what they are

Rivian, VW, and other EV-only companies: Where do they need to go? What do they want? How will they invest the money?

There will be no doubt that the money will be useful. Like other EV-only companies, Rivian has been struggling through a period of cooling demand around electric vehicles. The company has increased its sales but it is also losing money. It has $7.9 billion of cash and cash equivalents on hand, but it has acknowledged that cuts could be necessary if it’s ever going to achieve stability. Rivian has gone through a number of layoffs.

Scaringe said the partnership will bring Rivian’s new zonal architecture, available now through its refreshed second-generation R1 vehicles, as well as its software, to a “broader market.” Rivian recently became one of the few companies beyond Tesla to use a zonal architecture for its vehicles that rely on fewer electric control units than usual.

Meanwhile, VW has been going through its own struggles around EVs. The company’s plug-in models are selling well, but its market share in North America is shrinking. The software has had a number of bugs and customer complaints.

There are different shapes for the affordable mass-market vehicles. I understand, we can’t trust the shapes. But this could still mean that there are at least small, medium, and large vehicles in the works for that category. That seems important.

Are Rivian’s Five-Vehicle Prototypes a Signature of a Smart Future? An Insider’s View

I was distracted by Rivian announcing a $5 billion deal with Volkswagen to develop software and electric vehicles, but that didn’t stop the company from holding an investor day on June 27th.

It seems that Rivian’s vehicles are very similar to the onesTesla revealed at its company shareholder meeting, which could mean that both are using the same software in order to create these images.

So to toss into the mix five — five! — new mystery vehicles is either a pretty bold strategy for the future or a desperate effort to stay relevant amid rising costs and cooling interest in electric vehicles. Let’s take a look at the vehicles to see if we can guess what they are.

That does not look like a van shape. The InsideEVs editor-in-chief thinks it is more truck-shaped. Patrick George argues that we should not read too much into the shapes. They could be stock images or just placeholders. Rivian could theoretically be trying to get rid of sleuths with these shapes. Liz Markman wouldn’t comment on the mystery vehicles.

We can see the R2 and R3 in the next column. There is a mystery vehicle on that column. Three vehicles will be built on a platform called theMSP, named after its size.