Tesla, GM, Rivian And The Electric Pickup Truck Race

[Applause] americans love pickup trucks pickups accounted for 20 of all vehicle sales so far this year and they are outselling sedans for the first time ever the pickup truck industry is america's most prominent and most profitable industry so it's extremely important particularly to the detroit three automakers the f series pickup has been america's number one pickup and america's number one selling car for literally 30 plus years so it is a substantial amount of their sales and their profits at the same time there is an electric revolution taking place it's a really exciting time for the automotive industry i i compare it to at the start of the 19th century when motor vehicles were first being invented and we're in a similar time period now there's a lot of non-traditional manufacturers who want to come and be part of this journey to the electric vehicle combine the ruggedness and toughness of a truck and the technological advancements of an electric vehicle and you have the ultimate toy this is why established players like gm ford tesla and a slew of startups like rivien lordstown and bollinger are all working on electric pickups electric pickup trucks were not even something we had on the radar just a few years ago and now all of a sudden this market has really exploded to the point of you know perhaps there's already more supply than there is demand because we haven't really proven necessarily that there is strong demand or desire among truck owners to to have an electric pickup i've been in electric trucks for 15 years so i'm somewhat gratified that all of a sudden it's the rage we got to clean up the air what's the low hanging fruit what should we do first and pick up trucks because they're so popular and because it gets such poor gas mileage if you just said let's clean up the pickup trucks that would get you a long way there it was one of those things that was ready for reinvention the race is on for who will be first to market but when there are a plethora of eevee trucks to choose from will loyal pickup truck drivers make the switch to electric i think to your really loyal more of a motorhead type of a buyer you're going to need to convince them that electric truck has advantages everyone is rushing to it because they want to protect what they have the detroit automakers they lead traditional pickups they don't want tesla or a startup like rivien to come in and really take away some of their customers while tesla an ev leader is coming to the segment trying to defend his all-electric vehicle market share so it's really kind of a battle of two heavyweights let's start with the established automakers the company's benefiting from the pickup truck market right now are by far the detroit automakers at ford general motors and fiat chrysler i mean it accounts for 30 or more of their sales and that means a lot of profits as well general motors has called its truck business 65 billion dollar business the detroit automakers they rule the segment and it is their bread and butter general motors says it is working towards an all-electric future and it just resurrected the hummer brand with an eevee version that's expected to go on sale next fall well general motors has stated that our vision is zero zero zero vision zero emissions zero uh congestion and zero accidents obviously a major part of that is the electrification of the vehicles that we sell in putting this vehicle together and really beginning the ideation phase and looking at the battery technology what it would deliver in terms of performance speed capability charging capability range when we just realized the sheer capability that could deliver it really felt like it needed to be a hummer now obviously we spoke with a lot of customers and really what did people recall of the old hummer and what we found was people recall that yes it was premium yes it was unbelievably capable which are the real positives and the great news was that as soon as we mentioned what if it was electric it was absolutely phenomenal it was a breakthrough a big smile came out on people's faces because any of the negativity which may have surrounded it was immediately washed away and then there is ford ford's f-series lineup of full-size trucks is the industry's leading truck brand and the f-150 has been the best-selling truck in america for 43 years ford in the next 24 months will launch an all-electric f-150 and an all-electric transit van we are number one in the pickup and the van market we are electrifying and we're a brand that people trust ford motor is supposed to come to the market with their f-150 all-electric pickup truck sometime around mid-2022 ford they seem to be going a lot more for the commercial kind of traditional truck buyer and you can tell by their designs that they're for work trucks more than kind of a lifestyle vehicle and then there is a us leader in the electric vehicle market tesla sold a vast majority of electric vehicles in the u.s so far this year it unveiled its eevee pickup last year and the event got a lot of attention oh my god well maybe that was a little too hard [Laughter] tesla has started construction on a factory in austin texas to build the cyber truck tesla making a truck in in texas is kind of an interesting play for tesla who is such a uniquely california company being there lends some credibility to their truck it's a fairly savvy move by by elon musk tesla's decision to build the cyber truck in texas was very strategic you've got buyers there who have gone generations with buying fords and chevys and for tesla to enter the pickup truck market against those kind of brands they need to be in the heartland of america but whether the truck drivers in the heartland of america are ready to make the switch to electric is yet to be seen in a country where pickup trucks haven't changed all that much in a hundred years the design of the cybertruck is different pickup truck buyers tend to be pretty conservative in what they like it needs to look like a pickup truck you know all that kind of thing and this doesn't look anything like a pickup truck yeah but immediately makes pickup trucks look old-fashioned well i think there's a preconceived notion of what a pickup truck should be and i think that's something that we said if we're going to go bold we need to do something that breaks that norm i think it's gotten a lot of attention and i also think it's kind of grown on a lot of people for being something different and tesla's known to be different this is a completely sci-fi direction for them car design polarizing is never bad from what i've learned in doing focus groups for a long time is that if you have half the people like it half the people don't you usually have something that's pretty good because you don't want necessarily people to feel kind of in the middle about it because then you get nobody at least you want to evoke some sort of emotion either positive or negative and perhaps the cyber truck will end up looking a little bit different than the prototype what would you change on when it were finally reaching production what do you think you would do we're five percent too big and if we just take all the proportions and drop them by about five percent oh you mean all the way around yeah so it's gotta fit in a normal garage right yeah tesla obviously has a such a massive fan base and uh and again a very loyal fan base that plays well into the pickup truck segment overall when you look at that they're the ones to watch it's all going to come down to price points the usability of the vehicle tesla said they'll have a cyber truck uh to market in late 2021 if tesla's track record is anything and obviously they have started very little production that's going to be a tough time frame to have a vehicle out in late 2021 and that doesn't just go for tesla but a lot of ev automakers that are planning to have vehicles out late next year the coronavirus causes a lot of delays and it is very hard to build a vehicle rivien is one of the eevee startups that has been around the longest the michigan based company was founded in 2009 and was in stealth mode for years its r1t truck is slated to deliver next year unlike tesla rivien has cozied up with the detroit automakers ford invested 500 million dollars and it purchased a factory from mitsubishi in illinois they're really going for the lifestyle buyer they've got an suv coming they've got a pickup truck coming and it's really a nice looking modern vehicle i keep an eye on rivie and they're likely to be the first one out of the gate and i think they're they're certainly the one to watch the vehicle has some interesting features and content and i think from a capability standpoint as far as towing they've done some off-road testing and i think they're proving that it's off-road worthy rivian is a is a good example they're really finding in their own little niche and it's interesting to watch them too because the pickup truck and the utility vehicle that they're talking about are very much aimed at more of a lifestyle buyer somebody wants to go off-road for the weekend and go camping and do that kind of thing they're aiming for a buyer with with more more disposable income rivien has raised about 6 billion so far without selling a single truck or suv it also has an unlikely backer in the auto industry amazon led a 700 million dollar investment and announced it would purchase a hundred thousand electric vans from rivien the amazon investment for rivien was a huge deal for the industry but to have amazon's backing and their blessing not to mention pre-orders for a van it really kind of propelled them into another level compared to a lot of these startups another thing that rivann has kind of in its favor as is it's planning to sell its skateboard that the architecture underneath the bottom of the pickup truck and that makes it go they have an agreement with amazon and that's a pretty substantial order and it should help them move along a little bit more smoothly but even with all of that stuff in place they're still going to be a relatively low volume player for a while rivian they're considered probably the most likely to be a competitor to tesla as well as the traditional automakers entering the segment and they've got enough capital to bring the b vehicles to market but you need to build the vehicles because until then you really haven't accomplished anything [Music] another new truck company is ohio-based lordstown motors and its endurance truck is slated to come out in 2021. the company just went public via a spec we're gonna race me first right we really want to be first mover first electric truck pickup truck in the world lordstown motors which is catering to the commercial truck market they recently purchased the assembly plant lordstown assembly from general motors and they're planning to outfit that for production of their ev pickup in about a year from now this is the wave of the future this is the first time ever it's ever been done it's been thought of for a long time it in theory should work better i mean better this is pickup truck 2.0 and a lot of people want to be part of that instead of catering to the luxury buyer lordstown plans to sell trucks to fleets lordstown says it has secured 40 000 pre-orders for the truck which would equate to about 2 billion in revenue we are a meat and potato work truck right we are geared towards fleets right you know fleet managers as it turns out are just regular people right and they have noticed that this whole electrification of automobiles has completely passed them by there's been nothing for them so you know we're enjoying that pent up demand because we're the only one down in this price point making a full-size pickup truck for any new car company service needs to be a part of the plan this is one reason burns says they are selling only to fleets at first one nice thing about fleets is you can geographically roll out your service centers because you got to get premier service right if you were to do consumers i'd have to have service all around the country on the first day once we've expanded where we have service centers all across the country will we switch over to consumer or open it up to consumers um i think so but it isn't part of the the plan at this moment the b1 and the b2 there is bollinger which is more of a kind of simplistic modern design pickup truck it's almost like a boxy military vehicle and they are also planning to come to market q4 of next year have someone else build their vehicle though michigan-based bollinger motors has yet to announce its manufacturing partner but says it will do so soon it unveiled to pick up an suv last year it also says it will produce an electric delivery van just like rivien bollinger and lawrence town are interesting propositions because they are both more going more towards the work truck side of things bollinger they're taking a very a very specific route compared to ford or gm or ram that offer full-size pickup trucks in you know any number of configurations these are trucks that are going to start off in very specific configurations i think it will help them each of these companies as they are finding their space and finding their ground one other company to mention is nikola it unveiled renderings of the nikola badger this year after the company went public via a spec the thing about them is they're a little bit different of a play compared to a lot of the other startups they're really pushing a semi truck first and then they're going to come out with the badger and they're planning to partner with another automaker just like bollinger is to bring their truck to market it announced a 2 billion deal with gm but after nicola was accused of fraud by short seller hindenburg research and founder trevor milton resigned it appears the gm deal has been called into question we've announced our collaboration with nicola and our intentions and that's just really just still playing out and going through the various processes so more to come on our primary business is to provide heavy trucks fuel cell powered trucks the badger was something we were doing because a lot of people were interested in it and we said from the beginning that if we build the badger it will be with a partner if we don't have a partner we probably won't build a bathroom while the startups attempt to release their first vehicles the established players are retooling to build the evs the automakers seem confident that these trucks will be successful our electric vehicles will be profitable in the story initially just because the volume isn't there yet the margins are probably going to get squeezed on an electric vehicle however over the longer run you're looking at a vehicle that has many less parts than a traditional a gas powered vehicle so there there are certain advantages not only in terms of of initial cost but then also durability costs the consumer there's just less things that that can go wrong and potentially break in ev than there are in a traditional gas-powered engine but even if there are advantages americans still don't seem ready to make the switch to electric ev sales account for only 1.5 of the overall u.s auto market so far in 2020. the consumer isn't there yet from a mass standpoint i think we're we're moving in that direction but with gas prices the the level that they're at right now and some of the challenges that evs face it still isn't yet a mainstream market plus electric vehicles are expensive these eevee pickup trucks are no exception i think price is a challenge i think for the average consumer once they get over the price hurdle then it becomes how convenient is it to charge so i think there's a convenience factor still that has to be overcome if you look at somebody like you know a ford f-150 electric truck that has millions of potential buyers on the road versus somebody like rivien who is a startup and has zero you know buyers on the road that have you know experienced their product have like their product can recommend their product so i think that is going to be a challenge i mean it's always really hard to build up a brand name especially when you're looking at real historical competition that is almost interwoven into the fabric of of you know american history if you think about these ford and chevrolet pickup trucks traditionally pickup trucks in general are very loyal they're loyal to their brands they're loyal to their segments and they know what they want so the the newcomers they've got an uphill battle talking consumers into considering them so i do expect that the early buyers will be pretty early adopters they'll be innovators but in order to tip to a more mainstream buyer and tip to more volume we need to have the the confidence of the traditional pickup truck buyer all of the vehicles mentioned are available for pre-order pre-orders don't necessarily mean sales as we've seen with the model 3 and other reservation kind of holders people have put down their 100 deposit to to stand in line for it and there is definitely that space in there but at the end of the day to take it and get to a significant level of volume like they want again it's going to come back to the usability of that truck it's about range it's about infrastructure and it's about consumers believing in the capability if that buyer doesn't believe in the capability it's kind of a non-starter people have been putting gas in their vehicle for you know for decades as long as the car has been around so changing that mindset is tough even if it is you know the best thing in the world people are still resistant to change i think it's it's going to be tough you

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Id: JeFqM7hxNVg

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/THIESN123]

I'll bet $420 on tesla

[u/tashtibet]

including a Hummer EV Computer generated image is a joke/sham.

[u/WorldlyNotice]

Who will be first to sell a BEV truck on the international market?

[u/strontal]

As with sedans it’s not EVs vs EVs but EVs vs ICE

[u/buuuudy]

What are the chances the mini cybertruck gets announced next month with the cybertruck updates?

[u/AmbyGaming]

Could we not focus on winning, but focus on what matters: Having enough vehicles to allow competition and thereby create better and better cars.

I would love an electric pick up, but would much more like prices to go down and range to go up on all electric vehicles.

[u/Beastrick]

Definitely a lot of valid points. With so many options coming out it is not as clear cut. Tesla might be superior in specs but not everyone likes different things like Cybertruck's look and prefer something more familiar. Also brand will play part in the race. Tesla is well known EV brand but no necessarily the most known pickup brand. Will be interesting to see how the market takes shape.

[u/mwason]

In Canada because the distances between cities is so far it depends on who will build the next EV charging network and what standard to use. Charging networks are highly dependent on the province as some are open market electrical grids and some are closed to provincial government only. There is no competitor to beat the Tesla charger market in Canada right now.

[u/tcarson33]

Do any of you all know the driver assist / FSD ceilings of these EV pickup models? I’m clear on cybertruck but what about the others?