Ford invests $700m in EV start-up Rivian

A day after Tesla boss Elon Musk slated legacy car-makers for hating EVs and wanting them to fail, Ford has bought itself a board-level stake in EV start-up, Rivian.

Rivian, which debuted its R1T pick-up truck earlier this year to enormous attention from the car industry, had been at the centre of a tug-of-war between Ford and GM, both of which wanted a stake in it.

Ford and Rivian have entered into what is officially being called a “partnership”, with Ford scoring a board seat and planning to invest $US500 million ($A710m) into the company.

It’s not the first major company to invest in Rivian, with Amazon tipping $US700 million ($A1b) into the firm in February, though it’s the first car-maker.

Founded by RJ Scaringe, Rivian has developed its own “skateboard” EV platform, which Ford will be allowed to use as a shortcut to produce its own branded EV pick-ups.

For its part, Rivian scores Ford’s lightweight aluminium manufacturing technology, as well as its production expertise and buying power.

Ford president Joe Hinrichs will take one of the seven Rivian board seats, with both companies stressing Rivian should remain an independent operation.

"We're very excited to partner with Rivian," Ford CEO Jim Hackett said.

"[They have] a clean-sheet approach. They were just inventing."

Rivian's first planned production model will be the five-seat, four-door R1T pick-up, which will also form the basis of the R1S seven-seat SUV that will follow it late next year.

Both vehicles are likely to become available in Australia and both promise a range of more than 600km from a start-up company that didn’t even have any signage on its offices a year ago.

Ford’s electrification plans have been the subject of everything from derision to bewilderment, but they’re now beginning to coalesce.

It is believed that Ford will turn to its new European buddy and ally, Volkswagen, for access to its Modular Electric Matrix (MEB) for passenger cars, to Rivian for US-focused pick-ups and SUVs and use its own technology for a “Mustang-inspired” EV.

Separately, the two car-makers are also working on jointly-developed, next-generation Ford Ranger and Volkswagen Amarok model to appear post-2021.

Ford has already announced plans for an EV version of the huge-selling F-150 – using its own technology, rather than Rivian’s – and has budgeted to spend more than $US11 billion on EVs before 2025.

Scaringe said the company could join forces with another car-maker at a later time because the Ford deal wasn’t exclusive, but had no active plans to do so.

He said he signed with Ford because it proved it: “could actually use our skateboard. There is a lot to learn from companies like Ford".

For his part, Ford’s Hackett insisted EVs were coming and partnering with Rivian made perfect sense.

"This is going to happen," said Hackett. "It's just the kind of things that the tipping point approaches and if you wait too long, you can't recover."