Humans have always, by and large, had the power to pace their lives as per their personal needs. Now, when you have such a privilege at your disposal, it transitions directly into a more suitable brand of growth. You see, moving ahead with an opportunity at your own ease enables an individual to optimize their entire skill-set in a way that would be unfeasible through any other approach. However, the cookie doesn’t crumble the way we like it every single time. While pursuing our own growth, we must also consider the societal dynamic around us. For instance, if we take too much time playing around with an opportunity, someone else might just take and utilize it before we even have a moment to react. This abrupt reality is, of course, not ideal for anyone out there, so we try to come up with different ways that can assist us in making the most of what we are given. So far, the world has conjured up a gazillion such approaches, except none of them even comes close to emulating technology’s success. Granted, technology, to some degree, snatched away our pacing power, but at the same time, the creation has provided us with all the possible help in coping with this newfound ultra-quick speed of the world. The benefits to have emerged from it are everywhere for us to see. Nevertheless, with things evolving so speedily, it can sometimes also force us to completely revamp our plans, and automotive-giant, Ford has been the latest one to learn it.
Ford has officially announced that it will no longer collaborate with the EV start-up, Rivian to make an electric vehicle. The announcement does a U-turn on what was revealed in 2019 when both the companies expressed an intention to collectively work up a project of said nature. From what we know as of now, the reason behind cancellation was the constant complexity felt by the parties in regards to combining Rivian’s EV structure with Ford’s software. It’s, however, not to say that they won’t have any shared interests from now onwards. In fact, on the back of an investment worth $500 million, Ford remains as one of the most important investors in the start-up.
“When you compare today with when we originally made that investment, so much has changed: about our ability, about the brand’s direction in both cases, and now it’s more certain to us what we have to do,” said Jim Farley, CEO of Ford. “We want to invest in Rivian — we love their future as a company — but at this point, we’re going to develop our own vehicles.”
While practical complications certainly played a big part in killing the project, the wheels were set in motion once Ford’s first couple of EV vehicles, Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, ended up taking the industry by storm. Building upon that success, the company now looks to double its EV production by 2023, taking it all the way to 600,000.
Rivian, on the other hand, is set to take on the market with its R1T electric pickup trucks and RIS electric SUVs. Apart from that, the company is currently working on electronic delivery vans for Amazon.