Rivian Forum – Rivian R1T & R1S News, Pricing & Order... banner

I am suddenly at a cross road: R1T vs Lightning

Tags
lightning r1t
8K views 48 replies 19 participants last post by  camaroz1985 
#1 ·
I prefer the Rivian, but I just got this email from Ford:


Hi Gavin,

The wait is over! The F-150 Lightning order bank is now open. By now you should have also received a detailed email from Ford stating that you can now begin the ordering process.

The next step is scheduling an appointment to place your order. Please call or email me directly to set an appointment. Additionally, I will continue to provide any updates that Ford provides to us. I will be your Point of Contact each step of the way until the truck is finally in your driveway.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any additional questions. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you!

Best regards,

And the person as texted me twice (almost pushy :)
I will see what the wait is on the Lightening
 
#2 ·
I prefer the Rivian, but I just got this email from Ford:


Hi Gavin,

The wait is over! The F-150 Lightning order bank is now open. By now you should have also received a detailed email from Ford stating that you can now begin the ordering process.

The next step is scheduling an appointment to place your order. Please call or email me directly to set an appointment. Additionally, I will continue to provide any updates that Ford provides to us. I will be your Point of Contact each step of the way until the truck is finally in your driveway.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any additional questions. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you!

Best regards,

And the person as texted me twice (almost pushy :)
I will see what the wait is on the Lightening
Might want the dealer to check that, the stuff I read on the 24th and 25th seem to be reporting they are pushing it out to later in December. Would not be the first time I read articles that were not correct but seemed to be reported form more than 1 source that it was being pushed.
 
#7 ·
I prefer the Rivian, but I just got this email from Ford:


Hi Gavin,

The wait is over! The F-150 Lightning order bank is now open. By now you should have also received a detailed email from Ford stating that you can now begin the ordering process.

The next step is scheduling an appointment to place your order. Please call or email me directly to set an appointment. Additionally, I will continue to provide any updates that Ford provides to us. I will be your Point of Contact each step of the way until the truck is finally in your driveway.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any additional questions. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you!

Best regards,

And the person as texted me twice (almost pushy :)
I will see what the wait is on the Lightening
Gavin,
I wish you the best of luck really I do. I just got my money back from my dealership for my reservation. They really did not have much information at the dealership and I own an F150 now, just did not get the feeling this truck is going to suite my wants like the Rivian. It’s all a personal choice on how and what you plan to do with it. I think either way it will be awesome! However it may be some time before we take delivery, just hope they don’t raise the prices and the bugs get worked out of each!
 
#13 ·
Unless you reserved a Lightning in the first few days then no way will you get one in 2022. The same goes for Hummer and CT.

My current experience with ordering a Mach E from Ford is a total mess.
I have driven big Fords all my life.
I think it’s great that Ford, Chevy and Ram want to build EV trucks.

but I can’t figure out the business model. They sell gas powered vehicles. They have a Hugh dealership, with lots people working there to service those vehicles and sale parts. When Ford starts flooring those new EV trucks, and people start buying them, and they don’t require the normal service that an ICE does, then what?

mortgage, utilities, taxes, how the heck does all that get paid for when they only have a few EV to sell, and nobody wants an ICE anymore?

bankrupt?
 
#15 ·
Seriously? That's like saying what happened to IBM when Apple came along and mainframes went out of style, or what happened to the power company when there were solar panels, or what happened to credit card companies when you could pay from your phone, or what happened to retailers when you could shop online, or (i can go on and on). Come on!!!
 
#20 ·
do you have the answer to their business model?
The legacy manufacturers do not own the dealership networks and do not have a direct stake in their success or failure. Large dealership networks are legitimately terrified of the BEV revolution for the exact reasons you site, which is why their lobbying groups are fighting tooth and nail to keep the Teslas and Rivians of the world from selling direct to consumers, or at least make it as difficult and costly as humanly possible. Thankfully they are slowly loosing that battle and, with any luck, the BEV revolution will hopefully eventually kill the franchise dealership model as we know it today. Dealerships are in many ways a historical anachronism that do not really serve much purpose in the modern vehicle market aside from serving as middlemen who suck money out of consumers' pockets and profits out of manufacturers' financials. While the legacy manufacturers can't afford to and aren't contractually allowed to ditch their dealerships yet, most have in one way or another indicated that in the long run, they'd prefer to be rid of them as well. Just a couple of years ago GM essentially bough out a number of their smaller and lower performing dealers who were unwilling to upgrade facilities to support modern hybrid and BEV offerings from Cadillac, which is just one small but evocative piece of evidence for what I'm saying. This isn't just a random opinion, do a little googling and you can find any number of articles that discuss these points.

So short answer is, BEVs may well kill the dealers' business model, which would actually be good for everyone, including the manufacturers. The manufacturers themselves would strongly prefer to not have to eat the cost of paying dealers to perform warranty support services on vehicles that won't require nearly as much service in the first place. Its a win-win for everyone but the middlemen.
 
#23 ·
I prefer the Rivian, but I just got this email from Ford:


Hi Gavin,

The wait is over! The F-150 Lightning order bank is now open. By now you should have also received a detailed email from Ford stating that you can now begin the ordering process.

The next step is scheduling an appointment to place your order. Please call or email me directly to set an appointment. Additionally, I will continue to provide any updates that Ford provides to us. I will be your Point of Contact each step of the way until the truck is finally in your driveway.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any additional questions. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you!

Best regards,

And the person as texted me twice (almost pushy :)
I will see what the wait is on the Lightening
So, did you ever figure out if it was real? I put my reservation in during the event as soon as they announced it and my Dealership told me that they confirmed the order bank was in fact pushed back to December. Was wondering if I need to call them tomorrow and see what's up?
 
#27 ·
I prefer the Rivian, but I just got this email from Ford:


Hi Gavin,

The wait is over! The F-150 Lightning order bank is now open. By now you should have also received a detailed email from Ford stating that you can now begin the ordering process.

The next step is scheduling an appointment to place your order. Please call or email me directly to set an appointment. Additionally, I will continue to provide any updates that Ford provides to us. I will be your Point of Contact each step of the way until the truck is finally in your driveway.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any additional questions. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you!

Best regards,

And the person as texted me twice (almost pushy :)
I will see what the wait is on the Lightening
Go ahead and cancel your Rivian today so I can move up in line!

Jokes aside, buy whatever you can get your hands on and sell it if it's not "the one" once either start to really hit the streets people will no doubt overpay to simply not have to wait in line for a fresh preorder. The Lightning's line is much longer than Rivians, that perception of scarcity (real orders or not) will do wonders for early resale value
 
#28 ·
So I replied that I haven't received an email from Ford, so I couldn't configure the make and options, so I wasn't coming in till I could do that. I asked if they could help me get my letter from Ford:

"Yes, ordering banks haven't quite opened up yet unfortunately, working on technical issues with the site...looking at closer to end of November going into December. I'll keep in touch..."

so that answers that. I think she was just extra zealot to make a sale.
 
#29 ·
Yes, ordering banks haven't quite opened up yet unfortunately, working on technical issues with the site...looking at closer to end of November going into December. I'll keep in touch..."
I call BS on Ford.. if it was just a "site issue" and trucks were ready... they would take manual orders at the dealerships like they have for 90years. 30+ days to fix a "site issue" pleeeese.. get new coders, even the local high school comp sic club kids could get "issues" fixed faster than that. Ford = poor liars!
 
#44 ·
I figured that the timetable, price and overall usability of it didn't quite sync up with my personal timetable. I knew that I was going to have a Model Y as a transitional vehicle, prior to delivery of the R1T. But after really thinking through what I wanted vs what I needed, the R1T didn't quite tick the boxes for me. I still love it, but the value proposition didn't work out after running the numbers vs the competition. The only real "rub" outside of that was the way I felt the company was handling the whole test drive process. I would have settled for just looking at it in person, but was unable to do even that in this area.

I do wish I took advantage of the DSP though... I would have made a quick $10K :)
 
#45 ·
Gotcha, well, I would venture to guess that the majority of us here have not yet had any opportunity to test drive (let alone see, touch or feel) an actual R1T yet. I'm hoping that they can break out of this West Coast swing and move East, but who knows... I was thinking that they would have been able to run these events in multiple locations in the same general timeframe (or accelerate the pace of the tour) at this stage, but I'm sure that they want to have the right people working these events (first impressions / face of the company) and hiring hasn't gotten any easier. Logistics during a pandemic aren't making these events easier either. If it were up to me and I was having a hard time reaching all my pre-order customers for all of the reasons stated, I would likely start thinking about opening-up a centralized site visit at Normal HQ's to ALL reservation holders. Create a sign up page and grant access to a rolling event at HQ based solely on reservation date - first come first served for test drives, if you want one... 2018, 2019, 2020, then 2021 LE & Pre-order customers get to "slot-in". It almost feels like that would be the only way to hit everyone (if RIVN wants to keep their promise prior to customers taking delivery at this point). It's far from a perfect model, but everyone could at least have the option to drive before the buy. Location really does feel like a huge driver to these first deliveries. I would imagine that we will see a whole slew of LE customers getting deliveries in CA early 2022.
 
#46 ·
I was watching something interesting the other day. I know many of us watch some YouTube personalities, (Doug DeMuro, Rich Rebuilds etc). Someone you may or may not have heard of, Alejandro Salomon (AKA Salomondrin) revealed in one of his live streams that he was one of the very first people to reserve an R1T, and they originally told him he would be one of the first delivered vehicles, but with caveats. They told him he would need to change his reservation from the 400mi variant to the founders edition. Told him in August that it was coming... He said no problem. And apparently, they jerked him around and as we have all seen, delayed delivery to actual customers. He makes a couple solid points, nothing of substance, he still likes the car and the company, just not the way the marketing department is basically determining how and where allocations are going to go. My sense is that I was correct in what I said previously, regarding preferential treatment of certain people/personalities.
I just find it very odd that if he was actually reached out to back in August that they were extremely close to delivery for him and he complied with their wishes they still keep pushing him back. I wonder if anyone here who is an early reservation holder received that communication back in August. He can't be the only one.


Around 10:30 mark is where it addresses it.
 
#47 ·
I was watching something interesting the other day. I know many of us watch some YouTube personalities, (Doug DeMuro, Rich Rebuilds etc). Someone you may or may not have heard of, Alejandro Salomon (AKA Salomondrin) revealed in one of his live streams that he was one of the very first people to reserve an R1T, and they originally told him he would be one of the first delivered vehicles, but with caveats. They told him he would need to change his reservation from the 400mi variant to the founders edition. Told him in August that it was coming... He said no problem. And apparently, they jerked him around and as we have all seen, delayed delivery to actual customers. He makes a couple solid points, nothing of substance, he still likes the car and the company, just not the way the marketing department is basically determining how and where allocations are going to go. My sense is that I was correct in what I said previously, regarding preferential treatment of certain people/personalities.
I just find it very odd that if he was actually reached out to back in August that they were extremely close to delivery for him and he complied with their wishes they still keep pushing him back. I wonder if anyone here who is an early reservation holder received that communication back in August. He can't be the only one.


Around 10:30 mark is where it addresses it.
He just posted a new quick video, this time on the potential fire risk.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top