리비안의 재정적 어려움과 폭스바겐 파트너십의 역학 관계

리비안은 폭스바겐과의 파트너십을 통해 재정적 어려움을 겪고 있는 폭스바겐에 중요한 현금과 소프트웨어 전문성을 제공합니다.

### 리비안의 재정적 어려움과 폭스바겐의 전략적 투자
* 💰 한때 유망한 전기차 스타트업이었던 리비안은 현재 **분기당 약 15억 달러, 지난 5분기 동안 판매한 트럭 한 대당 3만~4만 3천 달러의 손실**을 기록하며 심각한 현금 경색에 직면해 있습니다.
* 🏭 2024년 3월, 리비안은 파산 가능성에 대한 우려로 **차세대 자동차 생산을 위해 조지아에 50억 달러 규모의 공장을 건설하려던 계획을 중단**한다고 발표했습니다.
* 🤝 그러나 폭스바겐이 **50억 달러를 투자하여 2024년 가을부터 두 회사의 중추적인 역할을 할 합작회사**를 설립한다고 발표하면서 리비안의 운명이 바뀔 수도 있습니다.
* 🚚 처음에는 수익성이 높은 픽업트럭 시장에 초점을 맞춰 전기차 부문의 공백을 메우기 위해 시장에 진출했지만, **최대 650억 달러의 가치를 인정받았던 기업공개 이후 재무 전망은 크게 바뀌었습니다.**
* 📉 상장 이후 리비안의 시가총액은 **1,500억 달러에서 2024년 9월까지 약 160억 달러로 급락**했는데, 이는 테슬라의 궤적에 비해 잘못된 계산과 전기차 시장의 둔화로 인한 것입니다.
* 🔧 소프트웨어 정의 차량을 강조하는 리비안의 혁신적인 차량 설계 방식은 소프트웨어 통합에 어려움을 겪고 **소프트웨어 자회사인 카리드에서 상당한 손실**을 입은 폭스바겐과 같은 기존 자동차 제조업체와 대조를 이룹니다.
* 📊 리비안은 폭스바겐과의 파트너십을 통해 필요한 현금을 확보할 수 있을 뿐만 아니라 **연간 약 900만 대의 차량을 판매하는 폭스바겐이 공급업체와의 협상력을 향상**시켜 더 나은 가격 및 자원을 확보할 수 있게 되었습니다.
* 🔍 리비안이 어려움을 헤쳐나가는 과정에서 차량 제조의 미래와 특히 경쟁이 치열한 미국 트럭 및 SUV 시장에 진출하려는 **폭스바겐이 리비안 인수를 고려할지 여부**에 대한 의문이 제기되고 있습니다.

Once a much-hyped EV startup, Rivian faces a severe cash crunch. It's losing about $1.5 billion per quarter. Rivian lost between $30,000 and $43,000 on every truck it sold in the past five quarters. There are potentially 1 or 2 programs away from potential bankruptcy. In March 2024, Rivian announced it would pause a plan to build a $5 billion factory in Georgia. That's where it was supposed to produce its next generation of vehicles. Then this happened. Rivian announcing, along with Volkswagen, that Volkswagen will be investing $5 billion in Rivian. The joint venture which the two companies could establish as early as fall 2024, could be Rivian's saving grace, but it's a lot more than that. It's revolutionary for VW. I think that this deal ended up being really consequential for Volkswagen, but I think maybe even

for the industry as a whole. Rivian started out with high hopes. It was addressing a major hole in the EV market. The best-selling vehicles in the US are pickup trucks, and they generate huge profits. Tesla, the biggest EV maker, wasn't producing one until recently, that is. Rivian. I mean, say what you will about them financially, but it is a great brand, and they make beautiful products. It's actually the same designer that designed the Jeep kind of renaissance that happened in the past couple of decades that went over to Rivian and made just a beautiful piece of art. Rivian also proved it could make commercial trucks, most notably its fully electric Amazon delivery vans. Then in 2021, it went public. How much excitement there is around Rivian? We haven't seen this in a long time. Rivian set to IPO this week at a valuation that could be as high as $65 billion.

When I've talked with executives in the auto industry, all of them say the same thing. This is the IPO to watch. When Rivian IPO'd, it was met with a lot of fanfare. That was right after the pandemic when there was a lot of money chasing a lot of IPOs. But things haven't turned out as planned. Shares have plummeted. Market cap shrank from $150 billion to about $16 billion by September 2024. I think what happened was people kind of extrapolated what happened with Tesla, and they kind of did the same math and they said, well, Rivian's already ahead of where Tesla was at this point. And it was. But the difference is Tesla when they started were the only game in town. You had this EV slowdown happen probably at kind of the worst possible time, especially you're trying to sell very expensive vehicles. Interest rates used to be really low when you had all the excitement.

At the end of the second quarter 2020, Rivian said it expected to be profitable by the fourth quarter. It still expects to lose $2.7 billion in adjusted earnings this year. When they went public a couple of years ago, they had, I think, almost $19 billion in cash, and they've burned through probably about 75% of that at this point, which is not great because they've been spending a lot of money on both R&D, on new products, as well as the money they started spending on building a second factory. But their volumes were not enough to sustain that spend rate. And the vehicles that they were building already were costing way more than they could charge for them. That's where the VW deal comes in handy. Apart from the much-needed cash, Rivian also gets the benefit of partnering with an established automaker. Rivian is a drop in the bucket, right?

Like if their wildest dreams come true, they're going to be selling 200 plus thousand units out of that factory in Illinois. They are way down on the totem pole in terms of getting favorable pricing from all of these different individual suppliers. Volkswagen sells about 9 million vehicles around the world per year. If you call those people up and you have Volkswagen standing behind you saying this is a multi-million unit order, then that person picks the phone up and they give you favorable pricing, much more favorable pricing than what Rivian would be getting solo. So if Volkswagen offers Rivian cash and bargaining clout, what is Rivian's offer? Despite its troubles, the way Rivian and companies like it design and build cars is fundamentally different from the way nearly every legacy automaker does. It comes down to three words: software-defined vehicle. Volkswagen tried to really get into the software-defined vehicle space, had a very difficult time doing

it. Basically, as the name suggests, it is one that is more or less controlled through software, and this is key software that can be updated throughout the life of the vehicle. Tesla pioneered this. It can diagnose problems on its cars, fix them, and even add new features all remotely without having to touch the car. Famously, in 2018, the Tesla Model 3 received a low rating from Consumer Reports because it took an extremely long time to bring the vehicle to a complete stop. That's a serious safety concern. The company fixed the problem with the remote update and secured the group's recommendation. Auto industry analysts, including Consumer Reports' testing director, had never seen anything like that before. To that end, to compete in this new world, VW founded a software subsidiary in 2020 known as Cariad. It stands for car, I am digital. Like a lot of other automakers, they intended to do most of their software in-house.

Well, at Volkswagen, like many other companies, that turned into a major disaster. Software problems delayed several product launches from multiple brands, including highly profitable ones such as Porsche and Audi. And more importantly, it's been a costly initiative. CARIAD reported €2.4 billion and €2.1 billion operating losses in 2023 and 2022, respectively. The struggles led to a management shakeup at VW Group, affecting even CEO Herbert Diess. That is what ultimately part of what led to Mr. Diess having to leave the company. And now what they did was they took the Porsche brand leader, Oliver Blume, and now he's the co-CEO of both Porsche brand and the Volkswagen Group. I'm sure he's a very dynamic guy and a great leader, but he's probably has a lot of plates to balance, right? There's spinning. And now to have to think about software in-house.

Since its launch troubles, Porsche said it would expand its relationship with Google for infotainment software. VW overhauled CARIAD's leadership in 2023, appointing a new CEO and board members, along with a new chief software officer from... guess where? Rivian. He's also ex-Tesla. All these troubles are despite the fact that VW, like every other legacy automaker, has been putting software in cars since long before Tesla or Rivian existed. The first computer chip on a car was designed to regulate spark plug timing to save fuel on a 1977 Oldsmobile Toronado made by General Motors. But the way legacy automakers have integrated hardware and software for decades doesn't meet the needs of the moment; upending the old ways has proven far more difficult for them than for the lean, nimble new companies established in the digital age. They say, how come Tesla's not having this problem, right?

How come the Chinese aren't having this problem? How come Rivian is not having this problem? One thing leads to another, and then they realize it's because the underlying architecture of how their vehicles are built is just so different. We can't change. We have to either change, which is super difficult, or try to piggyback off the work that companies like Rivian are doing. They can stay laser-focused, and they can sort of, you know, play in a different space of new technology where Volkswagen has to play and say, We got bills every single month. We got to pay. Rivian is losing $38,000. I forget what the number is, what, $35,000 per car. And they're doing a victory lap because they're not losing $40,000 per car. Volkswagen can't say that. They can't say, Oh, give us some time, shareholder. We're only losing $40,000 per car.

But they can play by a different script. This is the insanity of this industry. The automakers we know: VW, Ford, GM, Toyota, BMW, Hyundai, and even Tesla, rely on suppliers to provide them with parts since the days of the '77 Toronado. More and more pieces of the car have become embedded with chips and software. But one at a time. They wanted to add electronic stability control or massaging seats to a vehicle. They would go to their suppliers and say, Okay, here's the feature we want to add. Or suppliers might develop something that the automakers hadn't thought of and bring it to the automaker and say, Hey, here's our new feature we developed. And so then the automakers will take a look at that and say, Okay, we're going to buy this feature. So the automaker gets a set of components, sensors, actuators, and what is basically a little computer.

called an electronic control unit or ECU. The automaker just fits that into its vehicle. But the software on that computer is isolated to that one little device. It is written by the supplier, it isn't connected to the internet, and it doesn't talk to any of the other systems on the vehicle. Now picture there is somewhere between 70 and 100 of these ECUs in a single car. All of them have their own software, their own requirements. Automating a simple task like engaging a driver's profile with their preferred seat, climate, and entertainment settings could involve dozens of different ECUs. From the very beginning of Rivian, we said we need to own the electronics in the vehicle that allows us to own the way we think about the network architecture and that, importantly, allows us to own not just the software stack but allows us to own how the hardware within the vehicle evolves. You don't have dozens and dozens of black boxes with static code written by somebody else.

Instead, you have one centralized platform that houses all of the code that you yourself wrote, and the only way you can do that is if you are the one dictating what the underlying hardware looks like. Instead of 70 to 100 different computers throughout the vehicle, Rivian's first-generation vehicles had just 17. In their second generation, they reduced that number to seven. That wouldn't have been possible in the time that we did it. If we had to coordinate across 50 or 60 different ECUs across a variety of tier-one suppliers. Rivian, like Tesla and basically every smartphone maker, is able to tweak software and hardware independently by making use of a layer called middleware. It can send updates to the vehicle's software without changing out all the hardware, or vice versa. That middleware layer is essential to a software-defined vehicle. And that's where everybody's having a lot of challenges. Rivian has added more than 500 features through over 30 over-the-air updates in the previous two and a half

years. Even more importantly, what this deal does is it validates that new philosophy regarding what it is an automaker needs to have control of in-house. So it's a really consequential agreement. So Volkswagen gets access to software, and Rivian gets needed cash in a far larger, stable partner because its software and hardware will be going into Volkswagen vehicles. Rivian now also has access to a far larger potential pool of vehicles from which it can collect data. Rivian's success in software, hardware, and network architecture do beg some in the industry to wonder why bother making cars at all? It is very difficult to make a car. You're heavily scrutinized. You have a product that can has a liability side of it because it's moving people at high speeds. You have this idea of organizing supply bases, and you're trying to get all your material costs and everything going down. Logistically, if you're on the software side, you get to do that, and you can be brand

agnostic. You don't have to sell it to only your be on your product. You can sell it to many manufacturers out there. After all, Rivian's current financial challenges mostly result from the capital expenditures needed to bring vehicles to market. To add to that, Volkswagen also plans to resurrect the old American Scout brand as a line of all-electric SUVs. For all its success with highly profitable and prestigious brands - Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley - Volkswagen has never been able to sustain a presence in the US truck and large SUV markets. These vehicles would be direct competitors to the models Rivian currently sells. And I got no proof on this one. But the idea here is one of the strategies could be, does Volkswagen want to buy up Rivian and become a subset of Volkswagen? Does Rivian want to be in the car-making business at all in the future? I think what's happening is Volkswagen is looking at the Rivian equity investment as a hedge.

You know, in case a scout endeavor is not successful. You know, one of the toughest markets, perhaps in the world to try to penetrate and compete in, is the US. And I think Volkswagen has tried doing this in the past. We've seen Japanese brands try to do trucks in the US. Some of them have succeeded, but for the most part, they're dominated right by the D three. So, it's an open question of whether or not Scout would be successful. But first, this collaboration has to succeed. I don't know if this approach will ultimately work right. There is a long list of failed automotive partnerships between OEMs. Other automakers are, for now, pursuing the path VW seems to be abandoning. Some are familiar to Americans, such as Ford. Their conclusion is that if you believe this is the right path forward and it's so core, then you have to do it yourself. Others are the up-and-comers. Much of the industry is worried about.

The Chinese, somehow, some way, they figured out how to build software-defined electric vehicles with a 30-plus percent cost advantage versus the rest of the world. And it's not because they called up some white knight tier-one supplier to get you to do all the cool stuff on their behalf, right? They figured it out. VW and Rivian declined CNBC's request for an interview or comment.

Why Rivian And VW Both Need Each Other

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리비안의 고군분투와 잠재적 턴어라운드

한때 촉망받던 전기차 스타트업이었던 리비안은 분기당 15억 달러의 손실을 기록하고 수익성이 낮은 트럭 판매로 어려움을 겪는 등 심각한 현금 경색에 직면해 있습니다.

이 회사의 재정 문제로 인해 조지아에 50억 달러 규모의 공장 건설 계획이 중단되면서 파산에 대한 우려가 커지고 있습니다.

하지만 폭스바겐의 50억 달러 투자와 합작 투자로 리비안은 절실히 필요한 활로를 모색하는 동시에 자동차 산업에도 큰 영향을 미칠 수 있을 것으로 보입니다.

리비안의 투쟁과 폭스바겐의 지원

리비안은 2020년 4분기까지 수익을 낼 것으로 예상했지만, 상장을 통해 확보한 190억 달러의 현금 중 75%를 소진하면서 올해 27억 달러의 손실을 기록할 것으로 예상됩니다.

리비안은 폭스바겐과의 파트너십을 통해 필요한 현금과 공급업체로부터 유리한 가격 책정을 위한 협상력을 확보할 수 있게 되었습니다.

리비안은 테슬라와 마찬가지로 소프트웨어 정의 차량을 제작하는 독특한 접근 방식을 통해 진화하는 자동차 환경에서 경쟁하는 것을 목표로 하고 있으며, 폭스바겐은 사내 소프트웨어 개발을 위해 소프트웨어 자회사인 Cariad를 설립했습니다.

소프트웨어 통합을 둘러싼 폭스바겐의 고군분투

폭스바겐은 중대한 소프트웨어 문제에 직면하여 제품 출시가 지연되고 상당한 운영 손실이 발생했습니다.

이러한 어려움으로 인해 경영진이 개편되었고, 올리버 블루메는 포르쉐와 폭스바겐 그룹의 공동 CEO를 맡게 되었습니다.

폭스바겐은 소프트웨어 통합을 개선하기 위해 CARIAD의 리더십을 재정비하고 Google과의 관계를 확대하는 등의 노력을 기울였지만, 기존 자동차 제조업체의 전통적인 접근 방식은 디지털 시대의 요구에 적응하기 어려웠습니다.

차량 전자장치의 혁신: 리비안의 접근 방식

리비안은 차량의 전자장치와 네트워크 아키텍처를 소유함으로써 전통적인 자동차 제조업체 모델을 바꾸고 있습니다.

여러 개의 전자 제어 장치(ECU)를 사용하는 대신 시스템을 중앙 집중화하여 차량 내 컴퓨터 수를 17개에서 7개로 줄였습니다.

또한 미들웨어를 활용하여 소프트웨어와 하드웨어를 독립적으로 조정함으로써 2년 반 만에 30회의 무선 업데이트를 통해 500개 이상의 기능을 제공할 수 있게 되었습니다.

폭스바겐과 리비안의 계약: 게임 체인저

폭스바겐은 리비안과의 파트너십을 통해 소프트웨어에 액세스하는 동시에 리비안에게 안정적인 자금과 데이터 수집을 위한 더 많은 차량 풀을 제공한다는 점에서 중요한 의미가 있습니다.

리비안의 소프트웨어 및 하드웨어 분야에서의 성공은 특히 현재 자본 지출로 인한 재정적 어려움을 겪고 있는 폭스바겐에게 자동차 생산의 필요성에 대한 의문을 제기합니다.

폭스바겐이 순수 전기 SUV를 위해 미국 스카우트 브랜드를 부활시키려는 계획은 리비안의 모델과 직접적인 경쟁이 될 수 있어 잠재적인 인수 가능성으로 이어질 수 있습니다.

미국 자동차 시장은 폭스바겐과 일본 브랜드가 지배적인 "D 3"와 경쟁하기 위해 고군분투하는 등 진입하기 어려운 시장입니다.

"실패한 자동차 파트너십"의 오랜 역사를 고려할 때, 스카우트와 폭스바겐의 협업의 성공 여부는 불확실합니다.

한편, 다른 자동차 제조업체들은 독자적인 길을 선택하고 있으며, 중국 기업들은 소프트웨어 정의 전기 자동차를 구축하는 데 있어 상당한 '비용 우위'를 확보하고 있습니다.