I hold some RIVN and I'm wondering why they're spending resources on custom silicon instead of using something off-the-shelf. What is their advantage here? Can they hire the right people? Can they ship enough units to pay for it?
Those are my bearish questions. On the bullish side, the VW deal shows that they're willing and able to license part of their platform, so possibly have a big chance to recoup costs and maybe turn a profit just on that side, which justifies a big software + autonomy investment.
If their idea is both novel and useful, and if it actually works, and they can actually produce it, then: They can sell it to other automakers.
(GM has made a lot of cars with their own transmissions. And at various times, they've supplied -lots- of them to other automakers all over the world. They've made a lot of money doing this.
Someone's gotta build the machine vision/control systems for all of these self-driving cars; that someone may well be Rivian.
It's not as sexy as something like a new convertible might be, or a $40k self-driving electric car, and a consumer might not even know that the new car in their driveway has expensive Rivian parts buried inside, but that future can be very profitable for them.)
Oh, I think everyone missed this. Rivian is betting Elon made a big mistake by designing FSD to be strictly for Tesla. Rivian are doing FSD to license it out to other manufacturers. They're planning to open a new market.
Frankly, the "need" for custom silicon seems self-imposed, with the idea of appearing to be a technology company first rather than a car / vehicle company.
Cruise automation was also for years working on custom silicon, I knew people there. Many people working on the custom devices didn't really believe in the mission statement either, but they were paid well, and got to do fun work, so they took the job.
What makes Rivian, or Tesla better at making the "normal" car pieces compared to Toyota, or Honda? The answer is they're really not better at those things and quite worse typically ; bad fit and finish, rattles, corroding suspension components, difficult to buy replacement parts, etc.
If these companies were truly about making electric cars available to all, a partnership with a car company that knows how to do the "regular car stuff" makes a LOT more sense.
Instead you have these companies that might be innovative in the drive train, electronics, batteries, and co-packaging who have to learn all the "hard" stuff normal car companies have been doing for a 100-years.
Now, instead of moving into a partnership with a regular car company, they're becoming hardware/software organizations making custom silicon with custom software.
Even doing custom silicon and the associated software takes YEARS of expertise to do it and not have a 1000 warts, not withtsanding going into a MOVING VEHICLE where the risks of making mistakes is life and limb.
So, my conclusion is this is more fancy smoke and mirrors to impress investors and the general public, but not in the best interest of end-users (people who buy vehicles to use as transportation).
