Cars and vehicles are the archetypal examples of business {hardware}. And automotive manufacturing traditionally has been all about discovering methods to effectively engineer and assemble metallic, glass, and plastics into road-going autos with client enchantment. However the large change in locomotion from the inner combustion engine to electrical motors has shaken every part up. So when Volkswagen, the world’s highest-earning automaker, introduced final month that it was going to take a position billions of {dollars} right into a three way partnership with the start-up electric-vehicle maker Rivian, it was a dramatic signal of how a lot automaking has modified over the previous decade.
Volkswagen is partnering with Rivian not as a result of it needs entry to the corporate’s manufacturing experience and even its EV know-how. It’s doing so as a result of it needs entry to Rivian’s software program. What this deal represents is an admission by Volkswagen that it wants assist, and that its try to go it alone with EVs has stalled. However that’s progress. As they are saying, step one to fixing an issue is admitting that you’ve one.
On the face of it, the deal might look nearly like an act of charity by Volkswagen. VW is investing $1 billion up entrance in Rivian itself, one other $1 billion later this 12 months within the three way partnership (which is able to deal with creating software program and electronics for EVs), and an additional $2 billion if sure monetary objectives are met, plus an extra $1 billion mortgage to Rivian down the road. The EV maker, in the meantime, isn’t placing up any money; all it’s contributing is its information and mental property.
That is unquestionably a great deal for Rivian, as a result of it’s getting what it most wants proper now: cash. Working a automobile firm is very costly, particularly within the early phases when the corporate wants billions in plant and gear, and it has no economies of scale as a result of it isn’t making that many autos. (Rivian is meant to promote 57,000 of its fashions this 12 months. Volkswagen, in distinction, delivered greater than 9 million autos worldwide final 12 months.) Though Rivian’s SUV and pickup truck have gotten glowing evaluations and are highly regarded amongst high-end automobile patrons, the corporate remains to be dropping greater than $38,000 per car. So VW’s billions will come in useful, which is why Rivian’s inventory—which had been bumping alongside at about 10 % of its 2021 IPO value—jumped 50 % when the deal was introduced.
What’s fascinating, although, is that this might turn into an even higher deal for Volkswagen. That’s as a result of it may remedy one of many greatest issues VW has confronted lately: making software program for its electrical autos that truly works. When VW rolled out its ID.3 mannequin, which was presupposed to be its flagship electrical sedan, the car’s software program was glitchy, the contact display screen was unreliable, and a few drivers complained that the traffic-detection know-how was so erratic that their vehicles have been braking out of the blue for no motive.
Much more irritating for house owners, VW was unable to constantly replace the software program wirelessly in actual time, one thing Tesla has been doing for years. At one level, ID house owners needed to drop their automobile off on the vendor to get a {hardware} replace that was supposed to enhance the software program updates—an unofficial recall, in impact. Software program issues additionally led to delays within the launch of the ID.4 and precise recollects after its launch, in addition to coding points with autos from VW’s luxurious manufacturers Audi and Porsche.
The placing factor is that these failures weren’t for lack of attempting. Volkswagen was not a latecomer to the EV social gathering, attempting to purchase its approach in. Nor was it unaware of the significance of what the auto business now calls software-defined autos. Quite the opposite, the corporate has been very dedicated to electrical autos and invested closely in pursuit of the long run. VW has poured billions of {dollars} into manufacturing vegetation and constructing greater than half one million charging stations throughout Europe (and some 4,000 in the USA). In 2019, the agency invested $2.6 billion in an autonomous-vehicle start-up referred to as Argo AI. VW additionally launched an enormous in-house software-development arm, Cariad, which deliberate to make use of 10,000 “digital consultants.” All of this funding made business observers optimistic about VW’s electrical future: In 2022, the analysis agency Bloomberg Intelligence predicted that Volkswagen would overtake Tesla because the world’s largest EV producer by 2024.
That clearly didn’t occur. By market share, VW is now the fourth-largest EV maker on the planet, behind Tesla and the Chinese language corporations BYD and SAIC. As but, VW sells only a few EVs in America. And the CEO who had championed the corporate’s aggressive transfer into electrical and software-defined autos, Herbert Diess, was fired not lengthy after Bloomberg made that prediction.
What went unsuitable? It was, in some sense, a textbook instance of why large, established corporations have a tough time adapting to new applied sciences and markets. In any case, whilst Volkswagen has been attempting to pivot to EVs, it has continued making hundreds of thousands of gas-powered, ICE autos yearly. So a whole lot of vested pursuits on the firm had little rapid incentive in serving to EVs take off. VW can also be a big, bureaucratic group that adjustments slowly. And its experience was very a lot in {hardware}—manufacturing vehicles—not in software program. Profitable software-defined autos (such Teslas or Rivians) additionally tightly combine {hardware} and software program from the beginning. VW has struggled to try this, as the corporate’s management now appears nicely conscious: Rivian shouldn’t be, in actual fact, the one firm VW has partnered with not too long ago—it has additionally invested $700 million in a Chinese language firm named Xpeng, with which it’s planning to construct “clever related autos” for the Chinese language market.
To make sure, some electrical autos from old-school automobile corporations have grow to be common successes with fewer tech glitches; these embrace the Ford F-150 Lightning and Hyundai’s Ioniq. However at present’s EV-market-defining corporations (most clearly, Tesla and BYD) make solely EVs and hybrids and should not weighed down by legacy investments, both bodily or psychological. The identical is true, after all, of Rivian.
All of this might imply that VW’s new three way partnership is doomed to be one other false begin, a halting effort to retrofit cutting-edge know-how to legacy auto manufacture. However this conclusion would drastically overstate the character of Volkswagen’s drawback in addition to underestimate the potential beneficial properties of the deal. Volkswagen nonetheless has, in spite of everything, super experience in really making autos, and that also issues within the automobile enterprise. (When Tesla tried to ramp up manufacturing quantity of its Mannequin 3 sedan in 2018, the trouble despatched the corporate into what Elon Musk referred to as “manufacturing hell.”) So if working with Rivian places software program in these autos that’s dependable and user-friendly, VW could be nicely on its solution to realizing its ambition to be a power within the EV market. If you happen to can’t beat ’em, be part of ’em may very well be VW’s successful technique.
