Rivian is unveiling the first picture of its new electric delivery van — the company’s third electric vehicle — as it already has over $4 billion in orders from Amazon for it.
Earlier today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has announced that Rivian, an electric vehicle startup that took a $700 million investment from the online retailer, is going to make 100,000 electric delivery vans for them.
It was surprising because Rivian hadn’t announced that they even planned on making electric vans.
The company came out of stealth mode last year and unveiled their electric R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV, which are passenger electric vehicles with a focus on “adventure.”
It looks like Amazon got excited and announced the startup’s third vehicle for them.
Following Amazon’s announcement, Rivian has now released an actual image of the electric delivery vehicle they plan to make for Amazon:
The vehicle appears to be a full-size commercial delivery van with a large wheelbase.
Rivian hasn’t released any other images or specs for their electric delivery van, but we are told that more details are going to come out next week.
In this particular picture, the delivery van has an “Amazon Prime” decal, and at the bottom, there’s a sign that says “powered by Rivian.”
It’s not clear if Rivian is building the new vehicle just for Amazon, which is an important investor in the company, or if it will be available to other commercial or individual customers.
Either way, Rivian would have to build it over years in order to complete this order, which could be worth $4 billion alone at an estimated price of ~$40,000 per van.
Jeff Bezos mentioned that deliveries of the vehicle would start as soon as 2021 and should be completed by 2024.
Rivian has a big factory in Illinois where it is currently setting up production for its electric trucks, which are supposed to hit the market late next year.
They have previously mentioned a capacity of over 200,000 vehicles per year at the factory.
Electrek’s Take
That’s a good-looking electric van, but, of course, that doesn’t mean much.
It’s a commercial vehicle, and it’s going to be about the specs and the economics, but if Amazon is ordering 100,000 of them, I have to assume that those are pretty good.
We should know more next week.
On another note, Rivian is starting to have a lot of things on its plate.
It is bringing the R1S and R1T to production, helping Ford make a new electric vehicle, and now making 100,000 delivery vans for Amazon.
I normally don’t like to see EV startups spreading themselves too thin with a bunch of different projects, especially before they even brought anything to production.
However, Rivian seems to know what they are doing more than previous EV startups.
Also, they have raised over $1.5 billion in the last few months, so I am sure that they have the money to get these projects going.
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