Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
view the rest of the comments
Eh, to be fair, in 2019 Rivian was as much of a force as Tesla was. That year Tesla only had a Cybertruck prototype, but so did Rivian - in fact, they unveiled theirs two years prior in 2017. It then took them three years to stand up their factory and begin mass production, which they've done.
The Cybertruck isn't really too comparatively behind schedule relative to Rivian. It's not like Tesla had spare capacity at their existing factories, so they also needed to build a new one.
Elon probably thought he could save a lot of time by building a truck that didn't need a full paintshop, and easy to stamp and weld in body shop. Of course, despite the added cost of complex steel/aluminum body panels and paint shops, these are well understood processes, with literally hundreds of thousands of people familiar with them in North America. Comparatively few know how to make a stainless steel vehicle.