Quad-Motor ‘Tank Turn’ and a $1.3 billion investment round, Rivian’s shooting for the stars

Electric Vehicle startup Rivian Automotive announced a new $1.3 billion investment round led by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. last week — this is the 4th mega-investment injection that the Plymouth, Michigan based automaker received in 2019.

The ‘Tank Turn’

As much interesting that may seem, the new video that Rivian released which shows the R1T Pickup Truck doing a ‘Tank Turn’ is equally captivating, the R1T truck turns around entire 360°, and that is cool doesn’t matter if you’re a truck enthusiast or not, 4 independent motors on each wheel (Quad-Motor) enable this complex maneuver.

Although the complete science and engineering of this stunt are not very clear till now, it has something to do with the front and rear motors rotating in opposite directions as we can see in the following video demonstration. Before the video made it to the internet, TechCrunch had noticed that Rivian has trademarked the terms ‘Tank Turn’ and ‘Tank Steer’, find a new term you future quad-motor tank turners.

According to Rivian, the Tank Turn capability will be available on both the R1T Pickup and their R1S SUV.

The Big Investment

Rivian explained their 2019 achievements in terms of big players taking interest in this new automotive company’s plans in an official blog post, Rivian described the investment rounds of 2019 as:

The investment announcement is Rivian’s fourth of 2019. In February, Rivian announced a $700 million funding round led by Amazon. In April, Rivian announced that Ford Motor Company invested $500 million and that the companies would collaborate on a vehicle project utilizing Rivian’s skateboard platform. In September, Cox Automotive announced its $350 million investment in Rivian, complemented by plans to collaborate on logistics and service. In addition to these investments, in late September, Rivian announced it was collaborating with Amazon on the development of an electric delivery van utilizing Rivian’s platform technology and that 100,000 of these vans had been ordered with deliveries starting in 2021.

Starting with a clean sheet, Rivian has developed its vehicles with adventurers at the core of every design and engineering decision. The company’s launch products, the R1T and R1S, deliver up to 400+ miles of range and provide an unmatched combination of performance, off-road capability, and utility. These vehicles use the company’s flexible skateboard platform and will be produced at Rivian’s manufacturing plant in Normal, Ill., with customer deliveries expected to begin at the end of 2020.

In such a short period, successfully securing large investments like this indicates that Rivian is definitely shooting for the stars, no wonder that the only Pickup Truck that will be able to challenge the Tesla Cybertruck in many areas will only be Rivian’s R1T.

This money will surely be useful in catching Rivian’s production plans of late 2020 or early 2021 on time, although they have a deadline on starting production on the Amazon’s 100,000 electric delivery vans simultaneously.

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