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.
I concur, fucken fuckers.
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.
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.
Also the recharge times are still a deal breaker for anyone who fancies a road trip every once in a while.
If your road trips are only once in a while, you easily make up for it in saved time not doing weekly fill-ups.
What, you don’t like spending a quarter of your road trip waiting for “fuel”?
I just looked up the price for a Rivian truck and holy shit is this guy for real? Lmao. Just another out of touch CEO virtue signaling. If he really felt this way he would make them affordable lol
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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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
CEO of a product ridiculing a competitor’s product? I’m shocked, shocked!
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.
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That would barely scratch the surface, I’m afraid. For quite a lot of America, not owning a car is simply not feasible. I don’t have a large friend/family group, but in 4 cases now, we’ve had to relocate our families a town over because wages aren’t keeping up with cost of living. So we all have long commutes now. There are no buses, trains, etc. We were priced out of housing market. When my landlord sold the property and forced my move 5-6 years ago, I could rent and pay 30% more for a smaller place, I could buy for what I was paying if I wanted to move my family of 5 into a two bed with no yard, etc, or I could move a town or two over pay a bit more, and get a decent size house for my family. Today if I had to buy a house, I couldn’t even come close to affording the place I live in now, especially not at 7-9% interest compared to the 3.5% I got.
Now I guess you could still say fuck me I should have given up my dogs, moved my family into a shoe box and just walked to save the planet, but even then that’s not really feasible. In a town of 60k I moved from, there is only bussing, and even then they don’t run often enough to a wide enough range of places that you’re not building in additional hours of the day to get where you’re going. And they often don’t run past 7pm or before 7am. And that’s most of America. Even in large cities, public transportation is severely lacking compared to the rest of the civilized world.
Biking in the US should also help be a stopgap, but our whole society is so fucking car centric even that’s even not really feasible. Aside from the fact that most of infrastructure rarely has bike lanes or even places to store bikes, its still lacking severely from “I’m just going a few blocks over to the bodega” every few days and is more like “just 5-10 miles to the grocery store.” And this is just looking at my tiny little town where I live that is nowhere near as bad as somewhere like Houston, which is far more populous and also even less dense and less traversable by anything that’s not a car.
In 2023, saying people shouldn’t own cars is either ignorant of the issues around it or just classist. The Rivian CEO saying shit like this, with a starting price of $73k, is just more classist CEO bullshit. We don’t even have the charging infrastructure at the moment to support everyone buying electric, not to mention I’d be willing to bet that 50% or more of this country can’t even afford the starting price on whatever the cheapest electric is.
Real sustainability comes from changing the zoning code to cease outlawing walkability.
Reply:
For quite a lot of America, not owning a car is simply not feasible
WHY IS IT NOT FEASIBLE WHOFEARSTHENIGHT? IS IT BECAUSE OF ZONING? ITS BECAUSE OF ZONING ISNT IT
I hate armchair urbanists so much it’s unreal
Rivian CEO should keep his mouth shut until a few grand gets you a used compact electric hatchback (VW Polo or similar) with a decent battery.
To be fair the headline is a bit clickbaity. The quote is referring to someone buying a new Chevy Suburban in 2030. It would be kind of dumb to do that in my opinion, but I also would never buy a new car anyway.
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/
Stupid out of touch billionaires.
