Rivian was overvalued? Dang! I agree with Amazon. They will need multiple vehicle sources, just as they have now for ICE delivery trucks. Rivian stock will recover from this news. There was a dead cat bounce at 10am.
Ooooooh! Competition! Who’d a thunk it?
But, just imagine the decision-making process at Amazon.
Hmmm… Should we go with an unproven company that still hasn’t been able to ratchet-up their assembly process, or should we go with the company with a record of wretched reliability?
Decisions, decisions…
And, no matter what they decide, it’ll be wrong. At least according to a bunch of us who truly have no idea what goes into that sort of choice.
The post office uses Promaster vans, don’t you believe Ram is a competitive product?
In my area, they’re still using those old Grumman-made trucks with GM mechanical equipment. IIRC, those things have to be ~25 years old at this point. Let’s see if those Ram vans can last as long.
I got $74,000 burning a hole in my pocket for one of them thar MT truck of the year with the fancy dancy storage compartments. So where can I go pick one up today. Checked the phone book but don’t see anything under “R” or “E” or anything. Oh wait, need another $5000 for tax. Ok where can I get one? Mueller? Mueller? Anyone?
If you look around you may find some parcel trucks supplied by Ram.
That’s one of many considerations used in a fleet purchase decision. I think it’s less of an issue for a big company like Amazon because they have spares on hand for planned maintenance or repairs. If you look at cost estimates for maintenance and repairs, maintenance costs are far higher than repair costs. For the RAM trucks, I’m sure that Amazon already has their own reliability evaluation done on the existing fleet.