We expected Rivian’s Investor Day event to be a fairly sedate one, full of the usual financial guidance and maybe some updates on new vehicles like the Rivian R2, R3 and R3X. Clearly, we thought wrong. Rivian instead shocked the business world by announcing a joint venture with Volkswagen that would lend the European giant its software expertise in exchange for a massive investment of up to $5 billion.
But things go even deeper than that. In Rivian’s latest shareholder letter—and first spotted by BloombergNEF’s Corey Cantor on Threads today—we see an image with several possible new Rivian models under a sheet that we hadn’t seen before today. See below for more:
A slide from Rivian’s release.
On the left side, we see the first generation of Rivian EVs: the original R1S, R1T and the vans used by Amazon. Then we have the second generation R1 vehicles, which InsideEVs drove recently. But there’s another vehicle underneath a sheet above those; is it the R1X? The real mysteries can be found in the subsequent columns, with SUV-like shapes that seem separate from even the R2 and R3 revealed earlier this year. But two of the covered shapes seem to repeat, suggesting either that Rivian is separately listing multiple variants of the same vehicle or, possibly, that the shapes are stock “TBD” images that do not represent the final shapes and sizes of the planned vehicles. I’d avoid inferring too much until we get more clarity.
That may come soon. We’re listening in on Rivian’s investor call and will update this story as we learn more.
Update: A Rivian spokesperson declined to comment on our report. Presumably, these could then be future products, as automaker spokespeople rarely comment on what’s coming next. Still, more on this as we get it.
This is a breaking news story. It will be updated.
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