RUMOUR HAS IT
Rivian reveals radical electric concepts
US start-up showcases attention-grabbing pollution-free SUV and bakkie
Rivian, a US start-up, revealed all-electric concepts of a bakkie and an SUV at the LA Auto Show. The company says it can match the acceleration of a supercar with a 0-100km/h time of 2.7 seconds, but can also wade through a river or climb the side of a mountain. Yeah, that will grab people’s attention. Ken Shuman, the company’s chief communications officer, said it was founded in 2009 by Robert Scaringe, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since then he has amassed funding of $500m, even buying an old Mitsubishi assembly plant in Illinois in the US in 2017. That plant is being refurbished to produce Rivian vehicles. “We are at a place where we’ve got things ready to go,” Shuman said. That’s impressive because a few days before the show, no one had ever heard of the company. But Shuman says that was how they wanted it. “We were a stealth project for nine years,” he says. They even stealthily poached McLaren Automotive’s executive programme director Mark Vinnels,...
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