Gadgetory

hey what's up guys mkbhd here okay so Tesla competition Tesla killers what's the deal it's the end of 2018 right now and this week a fancy new startup revealed their electric truck and electric SUV called Rivia the SUV is a seven passenger called the r1 s and the pickup truck which seems to be the flagship vehicle is the Rivia r1 t now I'm not a pickup truck person by any means but I am an electric car person and the specs and the things that they were promising for this as an electric vehicle we're actually pretty promising they say it'll have a huge 180 kilowatt-hour battery bigger than anything on the market right now it'll have a 400 mile range it has four motors one at each wheel which will give it close to 800 horsepower and take it from zero to 60 in three seconds which is fast for any carb especially for a pickup truck not that you've raced that thing but hey that's the benefit of electric the top speed of 125 miles an hour fine and then it can tow up to 11,000 pounds and go up or down a 45-degree incline and it has a really advanced suspension and torque vectoring and all this stuff so as an electric truck it's pretty damn cool if I say so myself and then obviously since it's the shape of a pickup truck but - an engine and a transmission and all that there are a ton of space savings and they use that pretty well there's a huge front trunk which is awesome for storage space there is covered storage in the back there's a full spare there's the flat bed and then there's also a gear tunnel through the middle behind the back seats that can fit large items or backpacks or whatever you want there's a lot more storage in there and then beyond that they just kind of try to make it a cool pickup truck the design is a mixed bag for me I'm not as attracted to the front and the headlight area but I do like to back in I think that's cool but the giant daytime running LED headlights in the front they have a purpose there also the charging indicator it's a look a pretty solid interior with some huge screens which might get weird if it gets dirty if you're getting rugged with this but I don't mind it I like less buttons there are wall outlets in the bed a built-in air compressor a bed that folds all the way down cool and it's all coming they say in second half of 2020 starting at $69,000 nice so I asked Zack you know him as jerry-rigged everything who is a pickup truck guy what he thought of this thing these are his thoughts so I'm a truck guy trucks can go more places and accomplish more than cars can and while I'm a huge fan of my Toyota Tacoma it's hard to ignore when an electric truck like the rivey encompassing to be quicker more powerful and carry more those features might be too good to be true but either way I have my pre-order in I don't know excited to see what happens okay so this seems like the most promising electric vehicle that isn't a Tesla so is this the tesla killer no see the thing is Tesla as an electric car company even with as much as you read about them in the news and their problems with ramping up production with all that they are so so so far ahead at making an electric car a compelling product that people actually want to buy so here's here's a couple names for you Faraday future lucid heir these are both the names of promising new companies with impressive and compelling electric cars I've done videos with both of them as I looked for something to compare to Tesla now they're they're kind of both not doing so hot and they're both definitely not selling their cars yet so my gut when this new company Riven comes along can you blame me it's kind of the same now to be fair they've existed for a couple years now behind closed doors in a sort of a stealth mode and they see themselves as different they have a factory space already that they're in the process of setting up and they have a couple offices already it looks like they have a couple design prototypes and some driving prototypes and they have this whole snazzy startup California changing the world video it's actually really well-made but I'll link it below if you want to watch it but you can't just skip all the history and all the money that Tesla's put in to get to where they are in the electric car space so here's the deal with Tesla competitors I figured I'd put all my thoughts in one place to make a great electric car eat a couple things you need a design a good design you need a good price then you'll need great specs and you'll need what I'll call convenience and these pillars are sort what you need to compete and there harder than you might think design specs price and convenience something you've seen the startups do really well is this flashy sexy design they do that really well they don't have any hundred year history of design heritage they have to respect they're just kind of an open book they don't have anything holding them back they can go futuristic sexy sporty whatever I love that and then they can promise really high-end range and performance and specs on paper because there are really optimistic startups so hell yeah we're gonna try to do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds and 400 miles of range on 180 kilowatt hour battery for sure we can do that by 2020 totally and they can even promise to nail the price like I've seen a couple come out especially recently where that the price tag comes out and people turn their heads like oh really Tesla Killer lucid err which I made a video with was gonna start there thousand horsepower electric limo at fifty nine thousand dollars and rivey and of course is coming out now saying they're gonna have their four motor 180 kilowatt-hour battery pickups starting at 69 thousand but what these startups all lack is the biggest pillar convenience because convenience encompasses a couple things its mass production autonomous driving and a charging Network for me to conveniently switch to this new car they need to be making it and selling it in mass again Rivi n' they say they have a factory and they're gonna start setting it up but we've all seen how hard factory is to set up an autonomous driving is clearly a massive convenience and we've seen Tesla's been working on that constantly they just recently passed a billion miles driven by Tesla's with autopilot on that is a lot of data to learn from and to get better at it where everyone else relatively speaking is just starting out that's software you have to be a whole software company on top of a car company to make this part good and then I think the biggest drawback especially of this off-road vehicle that people are gonna want to go adventure and drive places that don't have chargers is a charging Network Tesla super charging networks isn't even necessary for most people most of the time if you have a charger in a garage you just charge up every night to a hundred percent but on the off-chance you do go for a road trip or you do go on an adventure having a public charging network wherever you're going and a fast public charging network is super important and Tesla's built one out like no other for real nothing is even close and they're adding to it every month Faraday future lucid heir and now Riven don't use Tesla supercharging Network now to be clear they can Tesla's made it pretty clear that they want people to actually do that but they choose not to and for some reason no one's taking them up on that so if all this convenience missing and obviously with Tesla's reputation already in the electric car space being pretty good it makes it tough to see one of these new startups seem like a big competition to Tesla at least for now so that brings us to the big dogs the Toyotas the BMWs Ford Mercedes Jaguar outie all these major older car companies with legacy maybe that's where the Tesla killer will come from major car companies they have massive manufacturing plants already they have the staff to dedicate to making good electric cars they can hire to get good at software they have the economies of scale to be competitive with price they're even already pretty great at car design and fit and finish that's one of the big advantages you have to being a hundred year old company is you get pretty good at tight tolerances and making good comfortable looking and feeling cars inside and out now let's use some of the first few attempts at electric cars that I've seen I really think they got to stop thinking about electric as this whole new aesthetic they have to challenge themselves with that's not really cutting it but some of them are clearly starting to get it so that's encouraging but you know what these huge companies don't seem to have ambition they don't seem to want it that bad and you can see it in the specs and their promises like the number of car announcements I see that say they're gonna come out in two to three years that have a roughly 200 mile max range is that's just ridiculous like not only is that not enough now that's way way too little in 2020 there's a great video by then from the Tesla nom exchange it below that like button where he goes into much more detail on that point but it's really good you should watch it and then on top of all of that they still don't have the super charging Network they still don't have the billion miles of autonomous driving data to learn from they still don't have the reputation that Tesla has and when it comes to shopping for electric cars so Tesla killers I'm still waiting I do think this ribbing truck is probably the most promising and complete competitor next to jaguars ipace but they're also more on the horizon from Porsche and Audi which are looking very promising that I'm rooting for I think Tesla needs as much competition as possible because competition makes us all better off that makes the products better and that gives us as consumers a better selection a more diverse choice of all these electric cars and trucks and SUVs so by the looks of things we're still a little ways away from that there is no Tesla killer but we don't need one there's plenty of room in the market for competition and that's what works thanks for watching talked to you guys the next one peace