Tesla exploded the electric car market, becoming the clear leader in the industry with the mass-market Tesla Model 3, and eventually even having the #1 best selling model of any kind in the world with the Tesla Model Y. Recently, though, BYD sales have climbed much faster, and Tesla sales have actually declined. Perhaps it’s just a bump in the road for Tesla, but this is definitely the year of BYD. There are several other Chinese EV startups rising fast as well — from NIO to Xpeng to Zeekr. Does that mean the US is just going to be left in the dust? Maybe, but we’ve got some cavalry on the way. In particular, watch out for the rise of Rivian.
In the latest CleanTechnica Talk podcast, CleanTechnica’s Scott Cooney and Rob Simon discuss the great potential of Rivian, the quality of Rivian vehicles, the company’s coming mass-market (read: cheaper) models, and the opening Tesla is leaving for another young EV startup to climb that always daunting mass-adoption scaling graph. Enjoy the discussion!
Are their new planned cars gigantic too? The existing models are too long for my garage.
The R3 is much smaller. My wife and I are looking at it to replace our Model Y and exit the Tesla ecosystem.
Yeah, i think the r2 is supposed to be a small suv as well.
From what I read, it’ll be slightly smaller than something like a Ford explorer. I wouldn’t say that’s small, but definitely going in the right direction.
The R2 and R3 will be smaller. I don’t think there are official dimensions for the R3 yet, so the ones I used are unofficial.
LxWxH:
R1T 217″, 79″, 78″
R1S 201″, 82″, 77″
R2 186", 75", 67"
R3 161, ?, 60