Congratulations, Rivian! You’ve torched twenty-three billion dollars—more cash than most countries’ GDPs—and still can’t deliver a truck without a recall. RJ Scaringe, the Tesla cosplayer in Patagonia vests, just hit a milestone no automaker has dared: negative net worth with a side of existential dread. Move over, WeWork; there’s a new king of value destruction.
That chart? It’s not a hockey stick—it’s a cremation plot. Every quarter, Rivian adds another billion to the pyre while shipping fewer vehicles than a Tesla service center on a slow Tuesday. $23 billion buys you 92,000 Cybertrucks at list price, or roughly all the Rivians ever built, plus a lifetime supply of apology lattes for delayed R1S buyers.
RJ’s master plan: lose $150,000 per vehicle, blame “scale,” then raise another $5 billion from investors too busy virtue-signaling to read a balance sheet. The R2? A mirage. The Georgia factory? A $5 billion hole in the ground. Meanwhile, the cash burn rate could power a small city—or at least keep the “We’re different from Tesla” marketing alive for another earnings call.
Let’s applaud the audacity: Rivian’s turned venture capital into performance art. $23 billion gone, and the flagship achievement is… a skateboard platform that still can’t skateboard. The only thing scaling faster than losses is RJ’s ability to convince Amazon that 100,000 vans by 2030 isn’t a fever dream.
Here’s to Rivian—proof that in EV land, “cash burn” isn’t a bug, it’s the business model. At this rate, the next milestone is $30 billion, achieved right before the inevitable SPAC-quisition by a cryptocurrency meme coin. Keep burning, RJ. The ashes will make a lovely memorial for the “Tesla killer” that killed itself first.