Rivian's hot lunch

[Chalo]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/09/rivian-stock-plummets-as-ford-plans-to-sell-shares-of-ev-start-up.html

Down 78% so far this year!

What's the emoji for Schadenfreude?

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/09/rivian-stock-plummets-as-ford-plans-to-sell-shares-of-ev-start-up.html

Down 78% so far this year!

What's the emoji for Schadenfreude?

Uh, Rivian Stocks are on sale!

All jokes aside, Canoo is doing poorly too and I don't like that.

 

[spinningmagnets]

Ive seen random pics on the web, showing that at least "some" Rivians have actually been produced.

That is a major step towards dispelling rumors that its vaporware. However, even if the company is putting out PR releases to show production, there can be a lot of "fudging the numbers".

I hope they survive and succeed. I believe competition truly is good for the breed. I haven't heard why investors are avoiding Rivian right now. Maybe a weak quarterly report?

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

No, Rivian's actively making Trucks and tons of people have them- I think Rich Rebuild's buddy Stevon owns one.

I think it has to deal with Ford now having rolling prototypes of the EV F150 out. They sold their portion and likely shared a lot of technology and software, but are now going to be competitors so this would be the first shot.

 

[SlowCo]

Might also have something to do with the upcoming new Ford F150 Lightning and the price difference:



[youtube]S_-xcaI0yYk[/youtube]

 

[liveforphysics]

I see a Rivian pickup at least once a day in SoCal. I do see at least a hundred Teslas for each Rivian, but they must have delivered quite a lot of them to see as many as I do.

 

[4πr^2]

Several for sale right now... if you have the money.

https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?makes[]=rivian

Most reviews I've seen seem to suggest it's a nice, well-thought-out truck with a ton of features and capability... if a bit pricey. But costs can always drop with future models. Most assessments of the company seem to say it is in good shape financially / leadership / product-wise, so would generally agree - seems like a great fire sale on stock...jump on it while you can. (* not to be construed as financial advice, no monetary gain/association on my end) The main issue I see is the electric truck market becoming more crowded...hummer, cybertruck, F150, etc. Will be interesting to see if Rivian can continue in an ever more crowded market.

 

[Hillhater]

I haven't heard why investors are avoiding Rivian right now. Maybe a weak quarterly report?

Ford selling off their major shareholding in Rivian , probably did not help !

Several for sale right now... if you have the money.

https://www.cars.com/shopping/results/?makes[]=rivian

Most reviews I've seen seem to suggest it's a nice, well-thought-out truck with a ton of features and capability... if a bit pricey. But costs can always drop with future models. Most assessments of the company seem to say it is in good shape financially / leadership / product-wise, so would generally agree - seems like a great fire sale on stock...jump on it while you can. (* not to be construed as financial advice, no monetary gain/association on my end) The main issue I see is the electric truck market becoming more crowded...hummer, cybertruck, F150, etc. Will be interesting to see if Rivian can continue in an ever more crowded market.

Well that will be some news to all those pre-order customers who are still waiting for their trucks...very few public deliveries so far,..mostly commercial, press, and employees to date !
( that one advertised is probably an employee delivered truck..with a 100% mark up on its original cost !)
Price drop in the future ??.... Rivian have just INCREASED their prices by 15-20% ..even initially to those long term pre-order holders,..but they quickly relented on that brain fart !.
However, they still suffer from being a very expensive truck ..($100+k), which is fine if you have no competition,...but they are about to loose that advantage with the Hummer electric, and Ford Lightening, entering showrooms now and Tesla following on ..all with trucks priced much cheaper than Rivian.
Rivians production delays, and commitments to Amazon for Vans means they are in a sticky supply situation just as their competitors ramp up.
Within a few months , there will be EV trucks not only from Ford , GM, RAM, VW, in the US, but also from BYD, Geely, and other big overseas manufacturers.

https://youtu.be/xtuTJ5gyWNo

 

[liveforphysics]

When I go to the Rivian site and do the vehicle build, it generally comes out around $86k. If people really get deliveries for that price, I don't think its fair to call it a $100+k vehicle just because people with early deliveries are choosing to resale in attempts to make 150-200% easy profit to a buyer with cash than time/patience.

 

[DogDipstick]

@ $104.
Go buy it.
https://carsandbids.com/auctions/rNBMNVYX/2022-rivian-r1t-launch-edition

These things sure sell. Lol.

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

can haul cardboard!!!
[youtube]uNP5o8dLja4[/youtube]

 

[liveforphysics]

Seeing lots more Rivians each month in SoCal area.

Glad to see it.

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

Sandy Munroe's teardowns are pretty neat to see. Rivian's battery packs are completely potted, and so are Tesla's now it seems.

 

[liveforphysics]

Sandy Munroe's teardowns are pretty neat to see. Rivian's battery packs are completely potted, and so are Tesla's now it seems.

Smart folks to pot.

 

[Chalo]

Sandy Munroe's teardowns are pretty neat to see. Rivian's battery packs are completely potted, and so are Tesla's now it seems.

Smart folks to pot.

I disagree. I think it will result in car packs going to landfill early, and no economically viable secondary uses for the very resource-intensive cells.

In an industry that's fully accustomed to rebuilds, core swaps, pick and pull, etc., I don't think it's a good thing to take the single most expensive component in an expensive car and make it disposable. But it is emblematic of why we must move beyond cars, and soon.

 

[JackFlorey]

I disagree. I think it will result in car packs going to landfill early, and no economically viable secondary uses for the very resource-intensive cells.

Residential, commerical and grid scale storage, using entire packs, will be the primary use for aged-out EV packs. For example, even today 90% of second life Leaf packs go as-is to energy storage systems, rather than being parted out for EV battery packs (or having their cells replaced.) Part of this is because their pouch cells are harder to work with than their original prismatics, but a much larger factor is simple demand.

 

[e-beach]

.....

I disagree. I think it will result in car packs going to landfill early, and no economically viable secondary uses for the very resource-intensive cells.

In an industry that's fully accustomed to rebuilds, core swaps, pick and pull, etc., I don't think it's a good thing to take the single most expensive component in an expensive car and make it disposable. But it is emblematic of why we must move beyond cars, and soon.

I think you are correct. Leaving junk around isn't unusual with humans. A simple look at air pollution, green house gasses, space junk and the space junk our planet has already left on Mars simply coincidences with your point.

 

[liveforphysics]

Sandy Munroe's teardowns are pretty neat to see. Rivian's battery packs are completely potted, and so are Tesla's now it seems.

Smart folks to pot.

I disagree. I think it will result in car packs going to landfill early, and no economically viable secondary uses for the very resource-intensive cells.

In an industry that's fully accustomed to rebuilds, core swaps, pick and pull, etc., I don't think it's a good thing to take the single most expensive component in an expensive car and make it disposable. But it is emblematic of why we must move beyond cars, and soon.

I respect your opinion my friend. We have an EV battery recycling company, and about 85% of the failed EV packs we get are corrosion related failures. We get mostly unpotted packs that pre-maturely failed to be shredded and recycled.

Incredibly, some potted packs can survive a decade and still be going strong. Packs potted in the right materials can have amazing thermal runaway propagation stopping behavior as well.

Even SpaceX pots there batteries today, when each gram of weight is so precious on a spacecraft. This is because the reliability and safety it offers is worth that potting mass.

 

[Chalo]

I've replaced corroded cells in e-bike packs and put them back on the road. I've broken up battery modules and reconfigured them for different voltage or different Wh capacity. A large majority of the batteries I've ever used or put into converted bikes had already done service in some other machine. If they'd all been potted, all those projects would have gone out the door with a brand new, first use battery and thus would have had a radically larger resource footprint.

Potted batteries are like houses that fall apart faster than they get paid off. They're fine for the original user, for a little while, but then they're trash. Recycling can recover some of the materials, but not the enormous investment of energy, labor, process equipment that made those materials into functional cells (that could remain functional if they weren't entombed).

Living in an old house, or running around on power from a secondhand battery, are part of treading lightly. Not everybody is into it, but until we can cut back our numbers to a fraction of what they are, we're all going to have to minimize the damage we do. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without" is not just thrift anymore. It's good stewardship and long term survival.

 

[john61ct]

Preach!

 

[liveforphysics]

The side of my job I least enjoy is fire forensics.

Each of the packs you fixed that had corrosion issues was lucky to end in a graceful way, but that's not an ensured gentle outcome.

I sadly have to filter through ashes of homes, apartments, warehouses and determine root causality. It's all too often something that would have saved the structure and fire from a tremendous amount of waste and pollution as a result of sometime potting would have avoided.

It's definitely a multi-faceted issue to consider.

 

[Chalo]

For what it's worth, the corroded cells I replaced were the result of water intrusion to upside-down Hailong packs that otherwise wouldn't have pooled moisture. That's the only reason I've ever seen crusty lithium cells firsthand. To what can you attribute the corroded cells you see at recycling time? Surely arranging to let moisture escape downhill is easier and has fewer drawbacks than literally bricking the pack.

 

[JackFlorey]

I sadly have to filter through ashes of homes, apartments, warehouses and determine root causality. It's all too often something that would have saved the structure and fire from a tremendous amount of waste and pollution as a result of sometime potting would have avoided.

Yep. And if potting reduces failure rates by (say) 10% (due to water protection) and increases life by 10% (due to better thermal conductivity) it will have made a significant dent in the total amount of waste from EV batteries.

It's not a one dimensional problem - even if those early Leaf metal prismatics were a very nice form factor for home storage.

 

[liveforphysics]

Driving on salted winter roads is the usual nightmare for corrosion induced battery fires. In SoCal and Texas they don't salt roads, but areas that do salt have a tough situation where the tires throw up tiny salt solution fine mist, and the battery swirls through turbulent salt mist air as the vehicle travels.

I used to think ocean salt mist was bad, and it is, but road salt is greatly more effective at generating molten salt bridging corrosion to induce fires.

I know I'm one of the few folks who loves potting, it adds mass, its often messy to do, it adds cost of potting material, and it prevents internal repairs or rework.

When I shipped my first volume production packs many years ago, I didn't pot because I wanted to be able to repair and rework them if they had a problem. I definitely got my wish on that, and ended up having my first recall and product buyback. That started me down the path of how to protect from corrosion in a situation where users bash it into rocks and ride it across rivers, jump it 100ft+ over and over hundreds of times, ride through ocean surf and sand, and then park it to charge in there high density urban left on the charger over the winter in a humid damp garage. What sealing design can I trust when users tumble the product over sharp rocks at 25-75mph as a part of expected operation? Can a seal be designed to remain vapor tight in this type of treatment not to cause a long term safety risk?
I wasn't able to solve that challenge in a production repeatable way without using potting encapsulation of all corrosion and vibration sensitive areas of the assembly.

I watched Tesla start out with no potting the same as I did, and for the same reasons. They were reworkable and rebuildable and serviceable, but they also needed it. This why they make potted packs today, and why I personally love to see more potted packs in automotive. I realize I'm one of the small minority of EV builders who loves potting, but I've had different life experiences over the course of making battery RnD my life 12-16hrs a day 325+ days a year.

 

[DogDipstick]

I sadly have to filter through ashes of homes, apartments, warehouses and determine root causality.

Interesting. We do alot of fire related insurance work too.. but we are usually on the side of the owner. We get our clients big money when the insuring company wants to lowball them. You should see this plumbing supply shop that had a propane tank explosion in Philli last year. Blew the building to pieces and the insurance tried to lowball them. We were hired to assess teh actual cost of the building before the fire. We work for the insurance negotiators.


Chevrolet Volt modules corrode easily if left with coolant in them and it seeps between the layers. White "efflorescence" powder is a tell tale sign of a bad cell. It grows on the bottom, it grows from the area near the tabs. The edges of where the layers meet.

Alot of the cells I buy on a whim for pennies end up being copper scrap. Buy a whole module of 36 cells, ubercheap, with a few known bad ones, I might get 12 good ones. 2/3 are trash and scrap. However, I paid 40$ for that module of 36 cells only cause they had bad ones. So in the end I might pay 3.33$ ea. Sell for 5$ ea, a profit is had.

i have a battery that I could pot right now. I have a few gallons of RAKA.inc epoxies and fillers. Case is very tight. It would hold fluid. hermetical sealing is easily within reach. Cells are new. I dont think I will. I will copy the OEM design as best as I can. I am an amataur and dont want a problem to come up in the cells and if it does I must be able to access the problem or else a 200$, 2000wH, 600A 72v battery is trash ( that I just poured 50$ of epoxy into, so 250$) I earn about 200$, every six months, of disposable income money, I get to spend on myself. I already spend 35$ of that on a brake rotor.

I have beaten on my unpotted Chevrolet Volt cell DIY ebike homemade packs very hard, through many winters, exposed without trouble or visible degradation. Salt? temperatures? All season, all weather? Yup. I mean beat on em. Hard. 40mph crashes, drops, smashes. Loop the bike and throw it twenty-five feet tumbling. Up streams. Downstreams. Wet, wash the bike with a hose, make sure to flush the battery compartment out too for a few min. Hot? Cold? Who cares. Charge them at 10*, and/or discharge the whole stack in 15 min or less on a 105* day. Boy oh boy they are hardy. Blows me away how many problems and what stupid issues the average ebiker gets into with a battery, I have had zero of those problems. Cost me less than any component and I have seen countless regular ebike packs die a young deth as soon as it is out of the sellers hands. Me? I cannot kill em. They wont die.