Tesla Rival Doing All Hard Things At Once - IPO, New Plant And 3 Models

When Rivian plants a charger in an electron desert like North Dakota, the revenue in return flows through a thicker pipe than it does for a charging empire that's only selling the electricity.

If -- or, more likely, when -- all the business books start to drop about Rivian Automotive Inc., at least one should be titled: Do All the Hard Things at Once. The young company is currently trying to finish a factory and three different vehicles, while planning a road trip to a Wall Street IPO. Apparently, Chief Executive Officer R.J. Scaringe was still getting a little too much sleep, because Rivian two weeks ago announced a plan to build its own charging network as well, ala Tesla. The decision, which Scaringe has hinted at for years, comprises at least 3,500 fast chargers at 600 sites and at least 10,000 slower-charging "waypoints" at campsites, motels, hiking trailheads, and the like -- all installed by 2024. It's a hugely expensive capital project: The hardware alone in building a fast-charging site can cost up to $320,000, according to one study, to say nothing of maintenance and other soft costs. In short, Rivian's go-it-alone strategy is a quiet indictment of U.S. infrastructure: What's out there at the moment, apparently, is not nearly enough. Tesla opted for the same kind of proprietary network, but that was nine years ago. The non-Tesla charging map has grown denser in the time since, but pins are still thin beyond urban centers, and the center of the country is blanketed with electron deserts. At the moment, Tesla has 9,723 fast-charging cords in the U.S., according to the latest Energy Department tally. The other networks combined have just 7,589 outlets for public charging, and those are far less widely scattered. The Tesla club is covered in Millinocket, Me., Athens, Ala., and Casper, Wyo. -- all places where Ford's juiced-up new Mustang Mach-E may struggle to run free. While this is a challenge for Ford, it's a bigger obstacle for Rivian's "Electric Adventure Vehicles," ostensibly headed to places more wild than the Santa Monica farmer's market.