Amazon invests big in electric vehicle startup Rivian Automotive

E-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon throws a round of investment in an electric vehicle startup Rivian Automotive. The value of the investment is rumored to be $700 million but there has been no official word on the amount of money that Amazon has invested by either party.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe announced the Amazon investment taking place at his company in a tweet last week, he said:

I am excited about the announcement of Amazon’s investment in Rivian and to have them on this journey with us. This is a major milestone and was possible because of the outstanding efforts of our team. I am proud to be working with such an amazing group of people.

Amazon’s Blue Origin is already a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the race for adventures to the moon and satellite operations business — now Amazon is trying to seize an opportunity in the futuristic electric vehicle and self-driving cars business which directly competes with Tesla.

However, Elon Musk does not seem intimidated by new electric vehicles and startups coming to the market as he considers the traditional ICE cars as Tesla’s true competitors, after all Tesla and Elon Musk’s mission is to electrify the entire automotive industry.

Rivian on the other hand as a startup in a tough business landscape has now the solid backing of the deep pockets of Jeff Bezos, the $700 million investment might just be the first round of more to come later.

Amazon also invested $530 million in self-driving tech firm Aurora just prior to the announcement of investing in Rivian Automotive — both of these investments by Amazon can create a great combination of electric cars and autonomous driving tech to compete with Tesla.

Rivian is confident that the company will be able to start deliveries in late 2020, they replied to one of our tweets earlier this week:

Amazon stretches its operations to self-driving and electric mobility to also confront Alphabet(Google) and Apple in these new developing horizons, also the tough Rivian EVs are able to reach into the wilderness that will also extend Amazon’s reach to difficult terrains in its supply chain.

Rivian’s electric vehicles will use the CCS charging network as they recently announced, this charging network is growing but still needs time and investment to provide a smooth inter-city commute in the North American region like the Tesla Supercharger network.

The financial muscle of Amazon might, later on, give Rivian the edge of creating their own electric vehicle charging network.

Rivian’s R1T Pickup Truck and R1S SUV are built for tough terrains as the automaker’s marketing campaign suggests. Recently Rivian took their prototypes to the Aspen Mountain in Colorado to demonstrate the off-roading and adventuring abilities of the vehicles.

Both the Rivian R1T Pickup and R1S SUV have the largest battery packs available in an electric vehicle today, this gives Rivian EVs a record electric range of up to 410 miles (~660 km).

Our friend Sean Mitchell has been following Rivian for some time now and has released his views and insights on the Rivan/Amazon deal, let’s see what he has to say. We hope that Rivian is able to hit its targets and the gorgeous vehicles make it to the roads soon.

Related:

• Rivian R1T electric pickup truck seems to have hit the sweet spot
• Rivian R1S vs. Tesla Model X spec to spec comparison
• Rivian’s electric R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV on display at Aspen, Colorado — CEO gives an interview
• Rivian unveils their electric SUV, the ‘R1S’ that can go up to 410 miles on a single charge
• Tesla Model X vs Jaguar I-Pace spec to spec comparison data
• Watch how Jaguar I-Pace performs at speeds above 200 km/h (~125 mph)