Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
Following a successful (start of) partnership with Amazon, the Irvine-based electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian has opened the door of its electric delivery vans (EDV) to other companies.
In 2019, Amazon placed a $7 billion order with Rivian for 100,000 electric delivery vans to be delivered by the end of the decade.
To date, Rivian has shipped over 15,000 of these vans to Amazon across the United States and a few units to Germany. In October of 2023, Amazon had received 10,000 units.
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After adding AT&T to its customer list late last year, the company led by RJ Scaringe has been in discussions with several other companies aiming to expand the customer portfolio.
New pictures from earlier this week showed the parking lot of Rivian’s plant in Normal, Illinois, filled with the EDVs with most of them being Amazon-branded while some dozens were unbranded.
Over the last few months, a few pictures were shared on social media showing vans branded by DHL fueling speculation about a forthcoming deal with the global logistics giant.
In June, Rivian’s CFO Claire McDonough said the company was “in the market speaking to a number of large B2B enterprise players”.
“Today we’re just building on a single shift in normal for our commercial vans and not even a full shift at that. We’ve talked a lot in the past about the longer term sales cycle required for the commercial van business itself. So we’re in the market speaking to a number of large B2B enterprise players about the capabilities, the total cost of ownership advantages that our vans can provide. And we truly believe it is best-in-class in terms of performance within the commercial van space in the market itself. But it will take us some time to build up more of the longer term demand trajectory, you know, beyond the Amazon relationship that we have as well,” the chief financial officer said.
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In late June, a new drone video shared by a Rivian enthusiast on YouTube revealed a significant accumulation of delivery vans at the electric vehicle manufacturer’s factory lot in Normal, Illinois.
The footage shows over a thousand vans, including hundreds of blue vans destined for Amazon, the largest shareholder of the electric vehicle startup.
This development follows speculation about a collaboration with DHL, fueled by social media images of DHL-branded Rivian vehicles over the past few months.
Rivian’s Normal facility has a production capacity of 65,000 units for their commercial van business. The vans come equipped with features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warnings, 360-degree visibility, a 15.6-inch touch display, and a 360-degree camera system.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
