Quote:
Originally Posted by Hehe
Hahaha... Rivian basically sold it soul for 5B.
Like... who's going to buy R1T/S now that people know a car that's 90% the same costs 15k less?
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You pay a heavy premium for a Rivian to straddle the worlds between off-road capability and on-road performance.
The R1 platform has a kinetic suspension (hydraulically cross-linked damping system) that
deletes corner lean, on a 7000lb truck. That's hypercar technology: their chief engineer came from McLaren. The truck also lowers for entry and lifts to 15" of ground clearance for rock crawling. That's 7" of lift from min to max. The system also levels the vehicle at 4 corners for camping.
Not to mention the quad-motors, which allows torque vectoring on both axles, to the limits of physics: to the extent it could literally run the wheels in opposite directions, which was the "tank turn" move Rivian eventually removed only for safety reasons.
In Rally Mode, I was consistently pulling off all-wheel power slides, pedal to the floor, with drift angle locked by the computer, then launched itself straight out on corner exit. Corner after corner after corner. All with *less body roll than my S2000*.
This is the
same truck I took weekend rock crawling in Hollister Hills SVRA.
Successfully spanning two completely opposite ends of automotive capability is called magic, if you ask me. And that magic is worth at least $15k: the value proposition is there, but it does have to be for the right buyer, to really get enough enjoyment out of that kind of experience.
Meanwhile, I mean come on, these Scouts have
solid rear axles. They're not applying mad-science levels of engineering to pull of something that should be impossible. They're not trying to. It's going to be super-capable off-road, and "just ok" on-road.
I think the Rivian R2 is going to be the better comparable, and it'll be available an entire year or more earlier, while being more attainable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hehe
VW is doing what it does best. Take an existing car, slap different panels and trims. Boom... new car model.  |
You used the wrong emoji. You mean to say it's a
.
The more you can leverage common elements, the more scale you can leverage for better cost efficiency (better capital utilization & pooled R&D resource), and higher reliability (consolidated test, validation, and design iteration). That's win-win for
everyone.
The only downside is a propensity for blandness, but if they're "getting away with it" as you're implying, that's better for
all of us.