Rivian partners with Samsung SDI in electric truck battery deal
The Rivian R1T
American electric vehicle startup Rivian announced today that it had reached a successful deal with South Korea’s Samsung SDI Co Limited to supply battery cells for its R1T and R1S electric trucks.
“We’re excited about the performance and reliability of Samsung SDI battery cells combined with our energy-dense module and pack design,” said RJ Scaringe, chief executive officer of Rivian.
Samsung SDI currently has battery supply deals with BMW and Volkswagen, estimated to each be valued around $3-4 billion US over 10 years. The value and terms of the Rivian deal is undisclosed, and it is unclear whether the deal also includes batteries for the company’s electric delivery vans.
Rivian is planning to start production of its R1T and R1S models by mid-2021, and is backed by some big players, including the Ford Motor Company and Amazon.com Inc. The automaker recently announced a successful funding round led by T. Rowe Price, raising $2.65 billion US.
It’s obviously going to be a big year for Rivian, but it could get bigger; the company is likely planning an Initial Public Offering (IPO) later in 2021. Bloomberg reported in February that Rivian is in talks with banks.
A number of EV startups have made the leap to publicly traded companies recently via reverse mergers with shell companies known as special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC). These include Xpeng, Nikola Motors, Lordstown and Canoo. It’s also expected by some analysts that Lucid Motors will go down this route.
Rivian’s skateboard platform. Image: Rivian