Rivian

Facing economic headwinds, Amazon consolidates robotic projects • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Amazon, amazon robotics, Hardware, Rivian, robotics, Robotics & AINo Comments

Westborough, Massachusetts is a quiet town of 22,000, 40 minutes by car southeast of Boston. BOS27 is among the town’s newer residents. The 350,000-square-foot Amazon facility opened its doors a little over a year ago. It’s a hulking, gray addition to the tree-filled scenery. Inside is a state of the art facility that — along with a space on the opposite side of Boston in North Reading, Massachusetts — forms the beating heart of the company’s lofty robotics ambitions. In the decade since the company acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in cash, it’s grown itself into one of the world’s leading robotics firms. Ask any founder in the warehouse robotics space, and they’ll quickly credit the company as the driving force in the space. “We look at Amazon, probably as the best marketing arm in the robotics business today,” Locus Robotics CEO Rick Faulk said at our robotics event in July. “They have set SLAs that everyone has to match. And we look at them as being a great part of our marketing team.” Amazon has set package delivery expectations at once-seemingly-impossible next or same day, and an entire industry has grown up around it, in hopes of keeping smaller firms competitive with the retail giant. Image Credits: Brian Heater What strikes you as soon as you walk through the doors at BOS27 is how much the space resembles one of the company’s many fulfillment centers. It’s cavernous and buzzing with robots and their human counterparts. The space, which was built to accommodate a business that had grown too large for just the North Reading location, is where the company develops, tests and builds its robotic systems. (Another space has recently opened in Belgium, as well, courtesy of Amazon’s September acquisition of Cloostermans.) This week, the company opened its doors to a handful of press members, including ZebethMedia. The “Delivering the Future” event was, by any measure, a PR push. It was an opportunity to show off the company’s shiny new production facility and a chance to present a kind of unified front for Amazon Robotics, a category that now encapsulates every element of the Amazon retail experience from the moment a consumer hits “buy now.” Image Credits: Amazon A couple of guided tours around the floor showcased the company’s growing army of wheeled robots built atop the Kiva platform, including the ubiquitous blue Hercules (the fourth-gen version of the product), and the mini conveyor belt sporting Pegasus and Xanthus, which is, for most intents and purposes, a lightweight version of the latter. Newer on the scene is Proteus, which arrives in a nearly neon green (“Seahawks green” as one executive joked today), with a small LED face and full autonomy — meaning it can safely operate outside the structured confines developed for the older models. Image Credits: Amazon Amazon also showed off a trio of robotic arms, which follow a similar evolutionary trajectory as their wheeled counterparts. There’s Robin, which debuted around 18 months ago and is now installed in 1,000 warehouses across the world. Its successor Cardinal adds a level of efficiency to the system, as it tightly packs boxes to send across the fulfillment center. A third, Sparrow, debuted at today’s event. As with its predecessors, Sparrow is effectively a souped-up version of a Fanuc off-the-shelf industrial robotic arm. The system is still in very limited pilots, including a facility in Texas and behind a safety cage at BOS27. What sets it apart from standard Fanuc arm deployments, however, is two-fold. First is the suction cup gripper, which utilizes pneumatics to pick up a wide range of different objects. The real secret sauce is the software of course. Amazon says the AI, coupled with a range of different hardware sensors, allows the system to identify around 65% of the inventory offered through the retailer. It’s a mindboggling figure. The system uses things like bar codes, size and shape to identify individual objects. Image Credits: Amazon Robin and Cardinal deal exclusively in boxes — of which Amazon has around 15 basic models. Sparrow has the far more complex task of picking up the products themselves. Beyond identification, this introduces its own spate of different challenges. If you’ve ever purchased anything from the company, you know how wildly these things fluctuate in size, shape and material. Hypotheticallym the same arm is picking up a bowling bowl and a bag of cotton swabs. That’s where the suction cup system comes in, offering a far greater range of picks than a rigid robotic hand. All told, the company has deployed more than 520,000 robotic drives since Amazon Robotics’ 2012 founding. It says that more than 75% of products ordered through its site come into contact with one of its robotic systems at some point in the process. Image Credits: Amazon Last-mile was the other of focus of today’s event. That starts with the 1,000 Rivian EVs the company has begun deploying to meet holiday demand. “Customers across the U.S. will begin to see custom electric delivery vehicles from Rivian delivering their Amazon packages, with the electric vehicles hitting the road in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle and St. Louis, among other cities,” the company noted in July. “This rollout is just the beginning of what is expected to be thousands of Amazon’s custom electric delivery vehicles in more than 100 cities by the end of this year — and 100,000 by 2030.” Image Credits: Amazon Somewhat surprisingly, Amazon is still very bullish on the future of drone deliveries. “A demonstrated, targeted level of safety that is validated by regulators and a magnitude safer than driving to the store,” Prime Air VP David Carbon said during a keynote. “Delivering 500 million packages by drone annually by the end of this decade. Servicing millions of customers, operating in highly populated, suburban areas such as Seattle, Boston and Atlanta. Flying in an uncontrolled space autonomously.” Image Credits: Amazon But while a rendering of its MK30 drone —

Rivian upholds 2022 production targets as net loss widens • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in R1T, Rivian, TransportationNo Comments

Electric vehicle maker Rivian affirmed Wednesday that the company is on track to hit its annual production target of 25,000 vehicles despite unpredictable supply chain crunches and component shortages. The startup-turned-public company remained committed to its production goal, even as industry-wide challenges, supply chain snarls and macroeconomic forces conspired to keep automakers from satisfying a strong consumer appetite for cars, trucks and SUVs. Rivian reported that its third-quarter production rose 67% over the same period a year ago, for a total count of 15,000 vehicles, including the automaker’s truck, SUV and Amazon delivery vans, through September 30. During the quarter, the company produced 7,363 vehicles, boosted by the addition of a second shift at its Normal, Illinois, factory. It delivered 6,584 of them — a significant jump from the 4,467 vehicles Rivian delivered in the second quarter of the year. Like other automakers, and especially other startups, Rivian has struggled this year, with founder and CEO RJ Scaringe forced in July to lay off 6% of its workforce, or roughly 900 employees. For the third quarter, Rivian reported a net loss of $1.72 billion on revenue of $536 million. That compares with a net loss of $1.23 billion on revenue of $1 million the same period a year ago. In October, Rivian was forced to recall nearly all of its vehicles to fix a steering defect. Meanwhile, the company is gearing up for long-term supply chain constraints it foresees in the battery supply chain. The industry’s ongoing semiconductor chip shortage is “an appetizer to the degree of the sort of supply chain constraint we’re likely to see across the battery supply chain over the next 15 years,” Scaringe said from the ZebethMedia Disrupt conference stage later in the month. However, the demand for Rivian’s vehicles remains, with more than 114,000 preorders in the U.S. and Canada as of Monday. That’s on top of Amazon’s initial order of 100,000 electric vans. Rivian pointed to several segments where it sees potential growth, including the 2026 launch of its next-generation R2 EV platform, a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to build electric vans at scale and the hiring of former Waymo and Zoox executive James Philbin to lead Rivian’s efforts in AI and automated driving technology. The near-term economic challenges are putting pressue on EV makers of all sizes. British electric vehicle startup Arrival, which restructured its business amid a cash crunch and pivoted to develop commercial vans for the U.S. instead of Europe, said Tuesday it doesn’t expect to earn revenue until after 2023. Also on Tuesday, Lucid Motors reported a net loss of $530 million for the third quarter, on $195.5 million in revenue. The startup confirmed it’s on track to build between 6,000 and 7,000 of its Lucid Air luxury sedans in 2022, down from an initial target of 20,000. Tesla nearly doubled its third-quarter income, to $3.3 billion compared with the same year-ago period, but said production remains hamstrung by supply. The record-setting $21.45 billion revenue Tesla reported for the quarter still fell below analyst expectations. Rivian, Tesla and the others also face competition from strong legacy automakers that continue to launch electric trucks and SUVs, such as the Volvo EX90 revealed Wednesday morning, on their quest to go fully electric by the end of the decade.

Arrival restructures (again), Bird shrinks and highlights from Disrupt • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Lyft, Rivian, The Station, TransportationNo Comments

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe for free. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Wow, what a week over here at ZebethMedia! Our annual tech bonanza (I can’t even call it a conference) was a flurry of activity. Our expo floor was packed, the roundtables were oversubscribed and the two stages showcased some of the most interesting people in tech. The event culminated as it always does: naming the Startup Battlefield winner. That process started with the Startup Battlefield 200, handpicked companies (from thousands of applications) that were vetted and chosen to exhibit on the expo floor. From here, 20 startups were selected to compete in Startup Battlefield, where founders pitched before judges for a chance to win $100,000 and the coveted Battlefield Cup. We winnowed it down to five finalists: Advanced Ionics, AppMap, Intropic Materials, Minerva Lithium and Swap Robotics. The judges who reviewed the final five were Mar Hershenson (Pear VC), Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), ZebethMedia editor in chief Matthew Panzarino, David Tisch (BoxGroup) and Richard Wong (Accel). In the end, the crown went to Minerva Lithium, a company co-founded by Sheeba Dawood and Hemali Rathnayake that wants to change the way we extract lithium. Minerva has come up with a coordinated polymer framework that extracts critical materials from salt water in just three days and without all the harmful effects on the environment. Minerva can not only extract lithium, which it can sell at battery-grade to battery makers, it can also capture other minerals and possibly purify the leftover water for drinking purposes. Congrats to Minerva Lithium! Oh, before I forget: we’ve opened up pre-registration for 2-for-1 tickets so sign up and we’ll let you know when you can secure your seat at next year’s event. You can always email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec Rivian and Lyft at Disrupt RJ Scaringe, CEO at Rivian, and Kirsten Korosec from ZebethMedia at ZebethMedia Disrupt in San Francisco on October 19, 2022. Image Credit: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia During Disrupt, I interviewed Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe and Lyft co-founder and president Jon Zimmer. Both interviews provided some interesting insights on the challenges of founding and growing a company. There was even a little news in there. Here are some highlights from both. Lyft, Jon Zimmer On past challenges:• It wasn’t Covid, but the sustained and early fight with Uber that Zimmer believes was the hardest challenge that company has faced to date.On autonomous vehicles:“I think it’s too early to pick you know, one winner and so today, it’s about having multiple partners. Ten years from now? It’s too hard to predict.”On Tesla FSD and whether Lyft should tell drivers not to use while shuttling riders:“We do not have have a policy currently. You know, we think that the regulatory bodies are best, you know, when it comes to that level of safety.”On the Biden Administration proposal:“The recent Biden Administration proposal that you’re talking about basically just returns things to the way they were in the Obama administration where all our drivers were independent contractors. Typically, we are governed at a state level. Federal Government is important and matters for all industries, but it’s really interpreted at the state level, of which I would argue we’ve made significant progress over the last few years, California being one example.” Rivian, RJ Scaringe On the future product front:• More than half of Rivian’s 15,000 employees are working on future product pipeline, including the R2 platform, which will focus on smaller and cheaper vehicles• Yes, there will be 400-mile “Max Pack.” Scaringe didn’t provide a timeline.• Micromobility, specifically an e-bike will be part of the lineup On the recall:• A “significant majority” of the more than 12,000 vehicles that were recalled earlier this month.• “It was really powerful for us to respond so quickly, and I think what we saw from customers — of course, there’s frustration on anything like this — but that we were trying to do the best possible job we could. We were authentic about it. We didn’t we didn’t sugarcoat it. We said we’re gonna go fix this. And so it actually has been really quite positive.”On the supply chain:• Think the semiconductor chip shortage was bad? Scaringe said that shortage is “an appetizer to the degree of the sort of supply chain constraint we’re likely to see across the battery supply chain over the next 15 years.” Woof. (that’s my reaction)• “The battery supply chain as we know it for lithium-ion batteries, whether you’re looking at lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate was built largely around consumer electronics and so it’s very small. It’s not a huge supply chain. And so it has to grow by 20x or on the order of 20x over the next 10 to 15 years. And so the level of investment needed to go build that is is staggering. And moreover, I think the level of risk concentration given that it hasn’t been built in the United States is a real thing.” Micromobbin’ The big micromobbin’ news this week fell squarely into the gloomy category. I’m talking about Bird and its plans to exit several markets across the world, including Germany, Sweden, Norway and “several dozen additional, primarily small to mid-sized markets” across the US, Europe and the Middle East. Deliveroo is partnering with Volt to trial the use of e-bikes for food delivery in the UK. You’re reading an abbreviated version of micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Deal of the week ZebethMedia Disrupt kept me pretty busy, but a few

Rivian voluntarily recalls 13,000 EVs for a potential loose fastener • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 10, 2022Posted in EV, Recall, Rivian, TransportationNo Comments

Rivian informed customers Friday that it is conducting a voluntary recall of all 13,000 vehicles it has delivered so far due to a loose fastener. The fastener, which may not have been sufficiently torqued on a small percentage of vehicles, connects the front upper control arm and steering knuckle. This can cause loose and vibrating tires, wheel tilt and loss of steering control. The company’s voluntary recall is expected to be posted on the National Transportation and Safety Administration on Saturday. Rivian sent an email to customers Friday evening. Rivian said that as of September 28, 2022, it had become aware of seven reports potentially related to this issue that had accumulated over the production of Rivian vehicles. The company said in a statement: The safety of our customers will always be our top priority, and we are committed to fixing this issue on any affected vehicles as quickly as possible. We will begin immediately contacting affected customers to schedule appointments for inspections and repairs if needed. We will make any necessary adjustments free of charge at one of our service centers. The repair takes a few minutes to complete, and with customer collaboration, we have built out the capacity to complete the needed action in as little as 30 days. To date, we are not aware of any injuries that have resulted from this issue. Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe also emailed customers saying that while the company has only seen seven reports potentially related to this issue across our fleet to date, “even one is too many.” “It’s important not to minimize the potential risks involved and why we are volunteering to conduct this recall,” Scaringe wrote in the letter. “In rare circumstances, the nut could loosen fully. I want to reiterate that this is extremely rare, but it does reinforce why we are acting with such urgency and caution.” If owners experience excessive noise, vibration or harshness from the front suspension, or a change in steering performance or feel, they should call Rivian immediately, Scaringe said, adding that if customers don’t feel safe driving the vehicle a Rivian employee will either service it as a house call or come pick it up. If a replacement part is needed, Rivian said it will offer loaner vehicles free of charge. Customers can call 855-RIVIAN5 (855-748-4265), you schedule a service appointment and a Rivian employee will come to the customer. They can also bring your vehicle to a Rivian service center, no appointment necessary. The company said it will also have pop-up locations in high-density areas for additional coverage as well.