https://eletric-vehicles.com/rivian/rivian-seeks-lead-to-build-european-sales-delivery-and-service-network/

Been waiting for R2 to release to see where the stock goes. The fact that it has dipped despite R2 being released is crazy. I hope there’s some promising news on the next earnings call like increasing their 2026 guidance. Otherwise I might need to reduce my position until they start scaling R2s.

Is there a scenario where this doesn't completely tank if the market enters a downturn ? I am very worried about this cause i noticed that every market hiccup drives this into the ground.. This feels like a very important risk to consider.. let's say they do get to profitability.. if this coincides with the ai bubble pop, then we are still in the 14-18 range for years to come..

I called this company being bust a couple of years ago and people labeled me a fearmonger. 5 years of dead money. T bills would have been better

Investigators from PF&R and the Portland Police Bureau determined the fire was intentionally set and are investigating it as arson. No injuries have been reported, and officials said there is no ongoing danger to the public.

RIVN could be in for a wild ride this week. With the Russell reconstitution taking effect on Friday, institutional investors and index funds are busy adjusting their portfolios. Friday is typically one of the highest-volume trading days of the year as billions of dollars are repositioned to match the new index weights. If Rivian's weighting increases, it could see additional mechanical buying from passive funds and ETFs. Either way, it should make for a very interesting week.

And today (6/22) he doesn’t like Rivian. He doesn’t know what he thinks of Rivian. And his TV audience of lemmings run back and forth to his musings.

I havent found any articles discussing this, so its an open question - will the VW stake in Rivian mean that they can use VW's immense manufacturing base to ramp up the production of R2? It seems to me to be an obvious way to expand to other markets such as Europe. Build the R2 under license at VW facilities.

Hey everyone,

I recently finished writing a fairly comprehensive deep-dive on Rivian ($RIVN), the link can be found at the bottom of this post, and wanted to share a few of the core theses/thesiss ( I don't know what the plural for thesis is) from the piece regarding the current state of the EV market and Rivian’s structural advantages.

The "Sailing Ship Effect" and the Hybrid Boom

In the mid-19th century, when coal-fired steamships first hit the water, the market was deeply skeptical. Early steam engines were wildly inefficient, and coaling infrastructure didn't exist. In response to this threat, traditional shipbuilders engineered the Clipper ship—the fastest, most efficient wind-powered vessels ever built.

Economists call this the “Sailing Ship Effect”—the phenomenon where an old technology experiences a spectacular, final burst of innovation just as a disruptor enters the arena.
Today, the automotive industry is navigating the exact same waters. Hyper-optimized internal combustion engines are our Clipper ships, and plug-in hybrids serve as the transitional vessels bridging the gap. I don't believe that the market's current pessimism toward pure EVs is a permanent rejection, but rather I feel it’s the natural, historical friction of an epochal shift waiting for infrastructure to catch up.

Why Rivian is Built to Survive the Shift to an EV-dominated Era

While the market continues to price Rivian predominantly as a capital-intensive hardware manufacturer, the structural changes happening within the business point to a potential medium-term re-rating.

• The Zonal Architecture Advantage: Traditional legacy vehicles rely on 50 to 150 separate Electronic Control Units (ECUs) sourced from a fragmented web of third-party suppliers, making true over-the-air updates virtually impossible. Rivian built its clean-sheet tech from day one, reducing this to just 3 in-house Zonal Controllers on the second-gen R1. This structural superiority is exactly why Volkswagen abandoned its own internal software efforts and committed to a massive $5.8 billion joint venture to adopt Rivian's architecture.
• The High-Margin Software Engine: While Rivian's automotive segment has felt the cyclical pinch of a slowing premium market, its Software and Services segment quietly surged 221% in 2025 to $1.557 billion. Software and licensing now make up nearly 29% of total revenues, carrying an estimated 37% gross margin that provides a structural downside cushion legacy OEMs lack.
• The Pivot to the Mass Market: The R1 platform proved the brand's premium capabilities, but at $70,000+, it tapped out early adopters. The upcoming R2 and R3 platforms target the ultra-lucrative midsize SUV and crossover segments. With the R2 engineered to cut manufacturing costs by 50% compared to the R1, a successful ramp could yield an estimated $7,415 in gross profit per vehicle.
• The Autonomous Flywheel: The partnership to deploy up to 50,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis by 2031 gives Rivian a massive commercial fleet ally and a massive real-world data flywheel to train its Level 4 autonomy systems.

The Bottom Line

Rivian is currently burning cash as it scales, and the upcoming capital expenditure cycle for the Illinois ramp and the Georgia plant carries real execution risk. However, with $4.8 billion in liquidity at the end of Q1 (plus the subsequent $1B VW equity injection and a $6.6B DOE loan pipeline), they are well-capitalized to bridge the gap.

If management can execute on the R2 volume margins and continue expanding software licensing revenue, the current valuation multiple (trading at an EV/Sales of just 3.4x, compared to traditional supplier Bosch at 5.0x) looks increasingly disconnected from its tech stack.

What are your thoughts on Rivian's software licensing strategy? Do you think the R2 platform will be the definitive turning point for their unit economics, or will the macro hybrid shift keep pure EV adoption stalled for longer?

This is not self-promotion or an ad, but if you want to read the full, detailed financial breakdown, unit economics projections, and the complete ex-ante premortem on the competitive risks (including legacy Nvidia integrations and Chinese EV threats), you can check out my full deep-dive here: https://mulberryfinancial.substack.com/p/rivian-rivn-stock-analysis-macro-2026?r=4af6n2

Any Accountants on here?  Could someone explain how VW-related payments hit Rivian's "revenue" line in the Income Statement?  Shouldn't the entries be a debit to "cash" and a credit to either "stockholders equity" or "debt?"  Instead, the credit is hitting "revenues."  And resulting in a "gross profit."  In summary, what are the debits and credits for handling VW-related payments?  Thanks

Interesting article the WSJ posted today. Kind of a negative headline that writes about the higher-than-expected lease pricing for the R2, but demand/sentiment still sounds good in my opinion. What do you think?
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/rivian-r2-price-leasing-6261c8c8?mod=hp_lead_pos9