BREAKING: Yesterday electric pickup maker Rivian announced a new round of funding. The trade press, the financial press, the tech press, even the MSM are all agog. We still have to wait until the end of 2020 to get one, and roll electrons at the rubes.
Creating a new auto company is remarkably capital-intensive, so electric vehicle maker Rivian is bent on accumulating a mountain of cash, ending 2019 with a massive $1.3 billion funding round that includes additional investment from backers Amazon and Ford.
Rivian, which plans to start building its battery-powered pickup trucks and SUVs beginning in late 2020, said the latest fundraising was led by T. Rowe Price and included BlackRock, Amazon and Ford, without providing additional details. It’s the fourth funding announcement in 2019 from the company, which appears to have raised more than $3 billion since emerging from stealth mode in 2018.
The Verge
Electric-Truck Maker Rivian Raises $1.3 Billion in New Funding
T. Rowe’s investment in Rivian is the latest in a series of bets it has made this year on the future of the auto industry. In May, it joined Honda Motor Co. and SoftBank Vision Fund in a $1.15 billion funding round for Cruise LLC, a self-driving startup majority-owned by General Motors Co. In June, it backed self-driving technology startup Aurora Innovation Inc.
Reuters
The Rivian pickup’s real edge over Tesla’s Cybertruck isn’t its battery
The electric vehicle startup's platform approach helped it raise nearly $3 billion this year. Rivian is pursuing a much bigger play here. The company’s own vehicles, as well as Amazon’s and Ford’s, will all be built upon the company’s so-called “skateboard” chassis. It packages together the battery, suspension, braking system, and mechanical components all below the height of the wheels, lowering the vehicle’s center of gravity. That improves handling and increases storage space, the company says.
For they are jolly good fellows,
For they are jolly good fellows,
For they are jolly good fellows,
And so say all of us.
Which do you want in your stocking next Christmas? Rivian, Tesla,…