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.”
Forgive me, sire; I hadn’t $80,000 to spend on a luxury truck.
You fuck.
If you knew that he was referring to the purchase of a $80k Suburban in 2030 would that change your assessment?
I think you know very well I would never engage with this possibility as a means of self preservation. Good day sir!
So a $77-82k Suburban is good in your eyes then? How come? Why? Oh wait, you didn’t read the quote.
Just because he compared it to a suburban doesn’t mean that the Mitsubishi mirage and used Corollas aren’t a thing.
And sure the Chevy Bolt is 26k, but that’s still 5k more expensive than a new Corolla and has like half the range, and you can fuel the Corolla way faster.
A luxury truck with the ugliest headlights on a car today.
I love the front end of the Rivian.
I’m not even sure what my headlights look like. I never really see them.
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
Um…does the CEO know that horses are still a thing and that horse barns (aka stables) are still in use? Also, the invention of the automobile didn’t instantly displace the horse. It was well into the 1920s before they became a regular sight.
Also…there’s lots of reasons to buy gas-powered cars these days. For one, not everyone lives in a home where they can install the necessary charger, so you’d always be on the “hunt” for charging stations, and fuel cars are generally cheaper at this time. Once we see the market flooded with EV cars, the prices will come down and fuel cars will no longer be the norm, but we’re likely a decade or more away from that.
I get what the CEO is trying to say, but it’s still incredibly tone-deaf.
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.”
CEO of an electric car company recommends that people drive electric cars.
Doesn’t really seem like much of a headline.
The statement might be more significant if it was a CEO of a car company that made diesel/petrol cars who said it.
It’s more the tone deafness. Most people couldn’t afford either a car or a horse barn in 1910 just like most people (in America anyway) can’t afford an electric car.
Well maybe if this guy sold an electric car that people could afford, they would buy it
A giant electric “luxury” truck is still a giant “luxury” truck. Buying one over the other is like buying a cruelty free synthetic beaver cap over a cap made from an actual beaver. Yes it probably is better, but you are still wearing an ass on your head.
It’s 2023, most people live in urbanized areas where a truck is similarly ridiculous, especially the modern “luxury” models. Those that actually use their vehicles for hauling things at a farm want real work trucks and tractors (regardless of engine type) with lower and longer beds.
Please pay for my apartment complex to install charger plugs in our garages then.
I’m totally onboard with EV’s, I just can’t have one right now.
Buying any car, electric or otherwise, is 'Sort of like building a horse barn in 1910’.
Real sustainability comes from changing the zoning code to cease outlawing walkability.
I hate armchair urbanists so much it’s unreal
In 1910, in the United States, there were about 5 automobiles per 1,000 people. His analogy is stupid.
Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 33, ORNL-6990, Oak Ridge, TN, July 2014, Tables 3.5 and 3.6.
I think his analogy is accidentally spot on. ICE cars are going to be around for a while
For a very long while, which makes it so important we switch away from fossils fuels to co2 neutral, synthetic fuels as fast as possible. And in Europe, nobody wants EVs anyway, sales dropped like batshit crazy and everyone is getting ICE cars…
Synthetic fuels would be great for all the existing stuff, but not sure where you’re getting EV sales are down in Europe.
New plug-in car registrations:
BEVs: *212,000 (up 57% year-over-year) and 17% share PHEVs: *100,000 (up 17% year-over-year) and 8% share Total: 311,897 (up 42% year-over-year) and 25% shareFrom https://insideevs.com/news/680428/europe-plugin-car-sales-june2023/
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.
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.
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.
If solid state batteries do work out line Toyota says, these old EVs aren’t going to be too attractive
Maybe. I remember when I built my computer in the mid 2000s (in high school) and saw something about magnetic RAM and how it would be a huge game changer. I thought about holding off so I didn’t build something that would immediately be like buying something that runs on vacuum tubes in the age of transistors, but decided I wanted the computer sooner than later, it would still be useful, and who knows what would really happen with this magnetic RAM buzz. 20 years later, magnetic RAM has not, in fact, changed the game.
Even if Toyota does pull a rabbit out of its hat and they build a bunch of cars in 10 years, that 10-year-old car built today won’t be particularly attractive anyway.
The average age of cars on the road in America today is 12.5.
They better be attractive in 10 years or they won’t have an easy time with initial sales. The EV glut on dealer lots right now is representing that now - ICE vehicles are backlogged but EVs are plenty (but overpriced for their longevity).
Hey rivian ceo, build more fast charging stations along interstates and not just in big cities. Or build EVs that can go at least 500 miles on a charge.
Got a battery powered van with a wheelchair ramp? No?
OK then.
Yes, people already have modded wheelchair ramps for the F-150 and model Y. It can be done, it has be done, it will continue to be done.
