Quote:
Originally Posted by ///M TOWN
They are very technically orientated and they clearly know exactly what they're doing and considering how much bloody money has been dumped into them by investors I'd say they're definitely on the right track
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and they look fabulous!
I played around with their configurator and my well equipped Rivian SUV is building out to 110k CAD whereas the well equipped iX I keep buiding on the bwm.ca site is sitting at 120k CAD.
IF (and that is a big IF) they are well built, have decent after sales support, deliver on the promised range, use materials on par with BMW, etc., I am not sure I could convince myself to get the more expensive iX instead of the Rivian SUV. They are not direct competitors, but the Rivian front end looks better than the BMW, and it is a bigger (maybe too big for me), more practical vehicle and it looks very nice in pics. I prefer the exterior look of the Rivian, interior they look very different but I am not leaning more one way or the other. The material feel, fit and finish will be more important in that respect.
There are a few small red flags that I have seen so far with them.
- They currently don't seem to charge anything for the third row of seats in their configurator, that seems odd to me. To me this implies that the pricing will likely change as they get ready to start production and will likely make them more expensive than originally thought. Will be more than happy to be wrong about this.
- They are saying that they will offer mobile service to all Rivian owners "anywhere in the US and Canada"... This doesn't directly affect me as I live in the Montreal area and expect there to be decent service around the city, but if I ever go to Chibougamau and need a small repair, I don't think they will be able or willing to come all the way there to work on my car... I mean if somehow they can make that work, great, but it does not look feasible to me. I expect them to walk that back at least in Canada to have a coverage map where a high % of our population resides.
- Further to the previous point, while trying to find a list of service centers, the only information I find makes it seem that they will have one in Vancouver... and that's it for Canada. This is not an official list but compiled by people on the forums based on job postings (and i did not dig deep into their forums to see if the list has been updated over time or not). I have a hard time believing that they would not have at least one in Toronto (and Montreal, Quebec city, Halifax, Winnipeg, Calgary...) so a full official list from them would be nice. I have no idea how companies like BMW deal with customers that are very far away from the nearest dealership for warranty covered items and perhaps they partner up with local shops and maybe Rivian could do the same at least initially.
- They have in the past said they would have level 3 autonomous driving (IMHO not feasible any time soon) however as I look for that info on their site, they seemed to have backpedaled on that claim (which is good) and will offer driver assistance similar to what my X5 has today. I do like the fact that they have not continued stating that they will deliver L3 autonomy, but it also means that there may be other promises, like performance, range, price, etc. that may have been "optimistic" and will be "updated" for real production. Some might not be super important for most (i.e. if 0-100km/h is 4.0s instead of 3.0s) but others like price, range, charge time, etc. may be deal breakers.
Anyway in the end, more choices for us is a great thing. To each their own and hope that everyone is happy with whatever they end up buying.