[california-flyer]

Just to be clear, I’m a big Rivian fan and am waiting for my R1T but I’ve been wondering what would happen to existing trucks if Rivian went under. I don’t think it will, personally, I think another company would buy them before that happened and continue selling these amazing vehicles.

I’m just wondering, would the trucks on the road turn into lawn ornaments or would they just keep functioning, without the benefit of any future upgrades? The DeLorean comes to mind but with an ICE powering it, it can conceivably keep being driven until something breaks that cannot be replaced. Is that different for an EV with all of the required technology on board making this thing run? Does anyone have any informed ideas?

 

[MilesK]

Just to be clear, I’m a big Rivian fan and am waiting for my R1T but I’ve been wondering what would happen to existing trucks if Rivian went under. I don’t think it will, personally, I think another company would buy them before that happened and continue selling these amazing vehicles.

I’m just wondering, would the trucks on the road turn into lawn ornaments or would they just keep functioning, without the benefit of any future upgrades? The DeLorean comes to mind but with an ICE powering it, it can conceivably keep being driven until something breaks that cannot be replaced. Is that different for an EV with all of the required technology on board making this thing run? Does anyone have any informed ideas?

Assuming someone doesn't but Rivian and take over I guess they'd keep going without new updates. Maybe in that case specialty shops would emerge that can work on the trucks and maintain them.

 

[Canyonero!]

As long as they don't change the operating system that the highways use, the trucks should run fine on the latest software release.

 

[Yossarian]

If that happened, assuming it was before Rivian got to true mass production, you would have the an instant collectible, the EV equivalent of a Studebaker Golden Hawk combined with an IH Travelette (if you had the R1T) or Travelall (R1S).

 

[CommodoreAmiga]

As long as they don't change the operating system that the highways use, the trucks should run fine on the latest software release.

I wonder what happens when the cloud infrastructure goes offline; both short-term, and long-term?

There was that recent snafu where everyone lost access to their trucks because all the digital keys were revoked/deleted.

If the truck doesn't "phone home" or receive some updated key/authorization for a period of time, do bad things happen?

 

[atebit]

In that case, Rivian could “open” the cloud infra to owners and/or some company that could continue to maintain it for the foreseeable future. IIRC this is what happened when holding companies got tired of foisting off ReplayTV onto each other. They basically “unlocked” all of the units and made their “cloud” (such as it was back then) APIs available to end-users who kept (are keeping?) it limping along.
The situation’s probably bettter today as I would guess Rivian’s cloud is hosted on AWS, etc., which in theory should make it more portable to some kind of crowdsourced afterlife.
The more likely scenario is some other company buying Rivian’s IP with the benevolent pretense of “supporting existing owners” which will last as long as it takes them to figure out how to “continuously improve” what they’ve bought to the point where they decide that your R1T/S is not worth the trouble and pull the plug.

 

[iansriv]

There are so many possibilities in the world. Russia could keep going. China could get in on what Russia is up to. Didn't GM go bankrupt a few years ago? Didn't our good friend Elon say Tesla was going bankrupt. Life is short my friend, and the weekend even shorter. Enjoy a beer and think good thoughts. Cheers!