Rivian Automotive, Inc. (RIVN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rivian Investor Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tim Bei, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us on today's call. Before we begin, matters discussed on this call, including comments and responses to questions, reflect management's views as of today. We will also be making statements related to the proposed formation of a joint venture, the expected receipt of additional investments from Volkswagen Group, and the expected benefits of the partnership that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the receipt of regulatory approvals, the parties entering into definitive agreements, and the achievement of conditions in such agreements as well. These risks and uncertainties are described in our SEC filings. With that, I'll turn the call over to RJ, who will begin with a few opening remarks.

Thank you for joining us today. On this call, I'm joined by Wassym, Rivian's Chief Software Officer and Claire, Rivian's Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will discuss our expected partnership with Volkswagen Group, the nature of Rivian's industry-leading software and electrical architecture that underpins this deal, and we will conclude with financial details of the transaction. Today's announcement validates our vertically integrated technology platform and is expected to substantially expand the market applications for our software and associated zonal electrical architecture. Rivian's proven electronics and software platform is expected to serve as the foundation for future software development in the partnership. The investments by Volkswagen Group, totaling $5 billion in Rivian and related to the joint venture, is expected to create a robust capital road map to support our future growth. We believe the opportunity ahead is significant. This deal is possible because of our focus on vertically integrating our network architecture, topology of ECUs and associated software platforms. I've spoken about the importance of these platforms in the past and how difficult it is to replicate them. Our decision to build these internally from day 1 and aggressively avoid dependency on suppliers or third parties for ECUs or software is core to how we built our organization and foundational to how we develop our products. Our Gen 2 R1 vehicles are an example of this. We reduced the number of ECUs in the vehicle from 17 to 7 because of our control over these platforms. With this partnership, we intend to create a joint venture with Volkswagen Group that is expected to provide $5 billion of capital to Rivian, consisting of $3 billion of corporate equity investments and $2 billion of payments related to the joint venture. The partnership is intended to focus on software and related electrical architecture design and development, with Volkswagen Group planning to utilize Rivian zonal electrical architecture and software stack beginning in the second half of the decade. Through this partnership, both companies will work to achieve further cost savings and deliver amazing customer experiences. This partnership is expected to accelerate Rivian's impact in the shift to electrification and reinforce our mission to help the world transition from fossil fuels through compelling products and services. The joint venture is expected to develop a software-defined vehicle architecture capable of addressing all segments from entry-level vehicles to the most premium and high-performance vehicles. We are excited to be partnering with Volkswagen Group. As one of the largest and most respected vehicle manufacturers in the world, Volkswagen Group contributes outstanding experience and scale across many strong brands. The breadth of offerings, global reach and knowledge of global market requirements is expected to enable the core technology to reach many more customers in many more places. Beyond the alignment with our mission, the step change in scale for our technology platform is expected to provide meaningful cost efficiencies. We view the partnership as highly complementary. Governance of the joint venture is expected to be balanced and include 2 Co-CEOs with Rivian appointing the tactical leadership and Volkswagen Group appointing the joint venture's Chief Operating Officer. Importantly, both Volkswagen Group and Rivian will continue to independently manage and operate their respective vehicle businesses. I will now turn the call over to Wassym who will provide some additional comments.

Thanks, RJ. I'm super excited about today's announcement. Our mission as a software team is to develop scalable software platforms that deliver world-class experiences to our customers, optimize efficiency for our operations and intelligent, secure data management across our company. Our unique capabilities are because of the intentional decisions that we took years ago to have a clean sheet approach to the software stack and electrical hardware in the vehicle. The result is that we own the software stack and control nearly all computers in the vehicle, which allows us to iterate quickly and deliver an outstanding customer experience. The vertical integration of our hardware and software platforms equips us to seamlessly incorporate new features and enhancements that improve the customer experience. By using customer feedback and cloud connected data, our over-the-air technology can update every single computer and enable improvement across the entire vehicle architecture, including vehicle dynamics, battery management, thermal management, body controls, autonomy, and digital experience. Our progress has been strong, and our customers are responding positively. Importantly, our technology platform has been intentionally designed with modularity and scale in mind. We've designed our software architecture with multiple abstraction layers to facilitate application across multiple hardware configurations. Our hardware architecture also has flexibility and is designed to flex across multiple vehicle configurations from entry-level vehicles to premium vehicles. Preceding this was our transition from our Gen 1 to our Gen 2 architecture, which was built to fully deliver on our vision of flexibility. Our teams have deeply engaged with Volkswagen Group technical leadership to thoroughly understand the technical viability of incorporating Rivian's technology into Volkswagen Group vehicle platforms, and we're progressing very nicely towards our line target. The proposed partnership with Volkswagen Group validates our vertically integrated technology approach and demonstrates the capability to create new business opportunities. As the auto industry transitions to smarter, more connected and integrated vehicle architectures, we strongly believe our technology is best positioned to deliver a modular and scalable platform that will help create highly compelling products and services that we expect will accelerate consumers' shift to electrification. We believe partnering with Volkswagen Group is highly complementary. The partnership is expected to benefit from Rivian's technology stack and Volkswagen Group global scale. The lead program for this joint venture is expected to be our R2 platform, launching in the first half of 2026, with Volkswagen Group first vehicle platform launching in the second half of the decade. Before I pass the call over to Claire, I would like to thank our employees, whose passion and talent made this possible. I am very excited with the opportunities that lie ahead.

Thanks, Wassym. Today's announcement reinforces the foundation for Rivian's future growth. The transaction also provides better visibility into Rivian's capital road map. The initial and planned investments by Volkswagen Group, together with our balance sheet cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments are expected to provide the capital to fund Rivian's operations through the ramp of R2 in Normal, as well as the midsize platform in Georgia, enabling Rivian a path to free cash flow positive and meaningful scale. In addition to the $5 billion of capital proceeds to Rivian, we anticipate incremental benefits through material cost savings, operating expense efficiencies, and future revenue opportunities associated with the joint venture. I will now describe the capital proceeds in greater detail. The total deal size is expected to be $5 billion. It is composed of an initial investment of $1 billion and planned additional investments of $4 billion. The initial $1 billion investment will take the form of an unsecured convertible note that will be convertible into Rivian equity. Conversion will occur in 2 equally-sized tranches that will convert at the same time. $500 million of the note will convert into equity based on a per share price of $10.84 and $500 million will convert into equity based on the 45 trading day volume weighted average price on the latter of required regulatory approvals or December 1, 2024. The additional investment by Volkswagen Group is expected to efficiently strengthen Rivian's balance sheet. The additional $4 billion of capital are expected to be comprised of $2 billion of investment into Rivian shares and $2 billion related to the joint venture. The investment of $2 billion into Rivian shares is expected to take place via 2 tranches of $1 billion each in 2025 and 2026. Each of these investments are expected to be priced based on the 30 trading day volume weighted average price of Rivian shares prior to the date of investment. The investment of $2 billion related to the joint venture is expected to be split between a payment at the inception of the joint venture and the loan available in 2026. The additional investments of $4 billion are subject to the formation of the joint venture, Rivian and Volkswagen Group executing definitive agreements, the achievement of certain milestones and the receipt of regulatory approvals. The $1 billion planned equity investment in 2025 will be subject to Rivian achieving certain financial milestones and the $1 billion planned equity investment in 2026 will be subject to a technological milestone. We will receive the proceeds from the convertible note this week and expect the closing of the joint venture to occur in the fourth quarter of 2024. We are excited about the partnership with the Volkswagen Group, the opportunity to build on Rivian's industry-leading technology platform and to secure capital for Rivian's future growth. Prior to turning the call over to the operator for Q&A, I wanted to remind the audience that our comments regarding today's announcement will be limited to the details outlined in our press release and shareholder letter posted prior to this call.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Dan Levy from Barclays.

First wanted to ask, with the mechanics of the technology and the JV, maybe you can provide us with a sense of going forward, is the intention for Rivian to use its own internal product by yourself? Or will you eventually be using technology developed by the JV? Just what's the split of what's going to be done internally? And then second, maybe you could just give us a sense on the JV's efforts beyond you or VW. Is the intention to license this out to possibly others as well?

Thanks, Dan. Just to make sure it's clear what's captured in the joint venture. The joint venture will focus on the zonal ECUs and the topology of ECUs to support essentially the network architecture within the vehicle, along with the software that's sitting across those ECUs. So the joint venture doesn't include anything with battery technology, propulsion platforms, our high-voltage systems, our autonomy platform, or the associated electrical hardware with our autonomy platform. Now with that said, this development of our ECU topology and the software that sits on top of it, this is something that the joint venture will be driving. And the first application of this will be in our R2 product. And there's a number of products that will be following that across both the Rivian portfolio as well as Volkswagen Group portfolio. Now, in terms of additional business beyond what we're doing with Rivian and what we're doing with VW Group, the joint venture certainly has opportunities to look at other opportunities. But I would say that today, we're very focused on all the products we have in front of us. And as you heard from Wassym earlier, a major focus for us in developing this technology, and this is from the very early days, was both the scalability, but also the flexibility of the platform to be used across a variety of different applications and form factors. Wassym, it would be good for you just to comment on that flexibility and how we design that into the architecture.

Yes. This is really one of the major design elements that we intentionally used as we created this clean sheet overall stack at Rivian. Dan, as you know, the auto industry is looking for really a standard operating system, is looking for ways to cope with the increasing level of software connectivity and smart content within the vehicles. We truly believe that Rivian's electrical architecture modular software stack is best positioned in order to do that. And what is really exciting with this partnership with Volkswagen is the possibility now to scale across multiple form factors, from premium vehicles, as we have been doing so far, to also entry-level vehicles. And that will provide very exciting opportunities in the future to scale this to other OEMs as well.

Great. And if I could maybe ask a follow-up, and I think Wassym you just touched on it. Look, I think you've consistently communicated the efforts that you've developed on software-defined vehicles. And a lot of that is internal that you've done that without really the help of others. Maybe you could give us a sense of what VW is bringing to the table that helps you. I mean, I think the capital benefits are obvious. I think you're alluding here to being able to scale this more broadly. And maybe how do we address or how do you overcome maybe some of the cultural challenges that sometimes have emerged with other JVs that we've seen? Because the track record on, frankly, automotive JVs and partnerships hasn't been the most stellar if you look at the different JVs and partnerships that we've seen over the years.

Thanks. Great question. I mean, first of all, what we really love with the Volkswagen Group is the scale, first, scale across multiple products, scale from really low entry products to premium products that present very exciting opportunities for the technology. But then also scale in terms of addressing global and international markets. The Volkswagen Group brings significant expertise in terms of being able to have vehicles that go into many more markets than what we are used to, which is in North America. I think the second aspect that you mentioned is related to the culture. This has been really one of the key topics of discussions with the Volkswagen Group leadership. As you might guess, this deal was not done in a day. We have been working on this since many, many months. And what we really appreciate is the willingness from the Volkswagen Group leadership to lean with the cultural change that the Rivian team will be bringing in terms of agility, in terms of being nimble, in terms of the quick iterations. Also, as RJ mentioned, in terms of how we are structuring the JV, there's very clear roles and responsibilities and the technical leadership will go to the Co-CEO that would be assigned by Rivian.

I'd also want to just comment on one of the things that's been important for us as we've gone through this process is we've -- you've spent a lot of time getting to know not only the senior leadership within Volkswagen and starting from the earliest discussions of Volkswagen Group's CEO, Oliver and I have had around alignment of philosophy and working -- working principles we've seen that manifest across the teams and importantly, across the brands. And so whether we're talking with the Porsche brand or the Audi brand, there's really a tremendous level of excitement to work together to create amazing products for customers. And that alignment around product excellence, which starts at the top of Rivian and Volkswagen Group, but also translates into the respective leadership teams of the brands is really something that we're looking forward to, and we see being highly complementary.

Our next question comes from the line of Ben Kallo from Baird.

Just first on the software, how do we think about all the data that you get as you put it into the JV? Is it the JV owns the software and after all these [indiscernible] platforms or does Rivian retain any of that is my first question?

Ben, the way it's being structured is the joint venture is licensing when you think of it as like the baseline intellectual property that sets our software as well as the suite of electronics. And the joint venture will then continue to develop on top of that for future products and future instances. And we've structured that in such a way that it allows -- or I should say, drives a wonderful alignment between Volkswagen Group and Rivian to ensure as we continue going forward into one of the questions asked previously to make sure that this relationship not only starts successfully, but continues to thrive over time. And the scale benefits of having a hardware platform that's shared across many different vehicle types, that's everything from chipsets to componentry to even the PCBAs themselves to, of course, the scale benefits of a software stack that's scaling across multiple platforms, think in particular here at the operating system level, provides us with large structural cost advantages both on the material cost side for the sourcing of components and hardware, but also on the OpEx side of things in terms of leveraging the very large R&D efforts associated with the software that's being written to run on top of all these platforms. So we see this as a significant structural cost driver for us as a business. It's consistent with the incredible focus you've heard from Claire and I around driving towards profitability and driving towards meaningfully positive gross margins within the business. And we've been very much aligned with Volkswagen Group around those objectives.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris McNally from Evercore ISI.

Tim, sorry, the line was breaking up for some of us. So I apologize if this is a repeat question. But can you just talk about maybe how this may change the line of sight on Georgia? Some of the initial comments, you talked about funding into free cash flow positive. And RJ, as you mentioned, this doesn't affect the actual vehicle platforms. So should we just think of this as a separate funding aspect thinking about R3 and Georgia or are the 2 sort of more tied in the way we're not thinking about?

Yes. Thanks, Chris. It's an important question. We've -- when we think about what this deal represents, Wassym and I have talked about some of the technical aspects and the ongoing cost advantages, both on the material cost side and the OpEx side. But importantly, this also will drive $5 billion in capital into Rivian. And that really provides the capital road map for us to not only launch R2 in normal, but importantly, to bring our midsized platform to our Georgia facility and then as you heard from Claire earlier, take us through positive free cash flow. And so this has been something that -- we've, of course, talked about this in past earnings calls. It's been a big topic with our investors around just our overall strength of the balance sheet and the necessity to make sure that we're in a position of strength as we launch R2 and continue scaling and we're really excited about what this transaction, what this partnership does in that regard in terms of really building out a robust road map for us for the future.

Our next question will come from the line of Joseph Spak from UBS.

Congratulations. I guess my question is, I just want to be clear, all future electronic architecture and software will be designed and developed within the JV? Or is Rivian still going to -- is Volkswagen contributing any [ resources ] besides the capital? And then just based on the timing of the funding to the JV, is it fair to assume that you're spending about $0.5 billion a year annually on such initiatives?

Well, thanks, Joe. To the first part of the question, the electronics, that's our ECUs, the zonals as well as what we call our XMM are essentially the platform that runs our infotainment within the vehicle. Those will be developed within the JV and those will support R2 and beyond, so R2, R3 and our future products, as well as variations of that platform, both the hardware and the software will be used across Volkswagen Group products. Now with that said, that doesn't include other aspects of the vehicle. It doesn't include -- propulsion, doesn't include battery systems. It doesn't include anything around our autonomy platforms and, of course, vehicle-related systems. Now, in terms of the OpEx associated with software development, the joint venture will also take on responsibility for the OpEx associated with those ongoing development efforts and the benefits, from a scale point of view, of developing a common stack of hardware, a common platform of hardware that, as you heard from Wassym, is highly scalable across a variety and a range of price points in vehicle form factors and applications, as well as the scalability of the software. And again, here, this is not talking about the user interface. This is not talking about what the overall user experience feels like, but really, the software layers beneath that, those will be scaled and used across many different vehicle applications. So we're really excited about the OpEx savings. We haven't actually talked about that in any specific terms. That'll come at a later date. But in addition and incremental to all that is, of course, the investment and the investment of $3 billion in equity into Rivian and then the additional $2 billion, that's in conjunction with the JV that Claire outlined in her opening remarks, but it's also captured in the public release.

One point of clarification I just wanted to add is that the $2 billion associated with the JV that I spoke about are designed to go to Rivian's balance sheet versus remaining in the JV itself. So once we're at the point of definitive agreements associated with the JV, we'll provide additional clarity and visibility into some of the details associated with the JV itself. But I wanted to make sure that that point was understood.

Our next question will come from the line of Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs.

Congratulations on reaching the preliminary agreement. I was hoping you could speak in a bit more detail on how the JV will fund itself over the longer term. I understand the investments coming from VW, but will Rivian need to make payments to the JV in order to use the technology that JV will develop? And then, over time, would you envision Rivian making any capital contributions to the joint venture?

Sure. As I mentioned, we'll certainly get into more details on the JV itself and the terms and Rivian's contributions to the JV when we get to definitive agreements. But as you could imagine, Rivian would be in a position to continue to make contributions towards the JV associated with maybe much of the development work that will be happening there for our specific vehicles.

And our next question comes from the line of Tobias Beith from Redburn Atlantic.

I was wondering if you could perhaps describe how Rivian has calculated the future value of the IP injected into the JV. I guess, on some of my rough math, $3 billion paid up might be equivalent to royalty income from the sale of a couple of million units, which was a large figure in absolute terms, probably only covers production from Volkswagen for a couple of years.

The way that we think about it is that the transaction as a whole provides a powerful platform for future growth for Rivian. And it's not just about the $2 billion of JV-related capital. It's the full $5 billion of capital and the opportunity that we have to accelerate our mission through scaled innovation of our technology platform in the joint venture. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we also anticipate incremental benefits to Rivian through material cost savings, operating cost efficiency, and future revenue opportunities associated with the joint venture that will collectively create value for the organization as a whole.

Our next question comes from the line of James Picariello from BNP Paribas.

My apologies. The connection kind of cut out earlier. So if this was already asked, again, my apologies. But just on the scaling, the potential scaling benefit of the purchasing of the hardware for the electrical architecture that the JV will provide. Can you just kind of help us unpack -- think about what those scaling benefits could look like in terms of the hardware side of purchasing?

Sure, James. We've talked about this broadly for us as a business. When we look at launching our first products just over 2 years ago, and the supplier relationships associated with making the components that go into our vehicles in those days, it was challenging to show suppliers both that we were going to be a brand that customer is really excited about and we're willing to scale with. And fast forward to today and with the R1 product, the R1S is the most popular premium electric vehicle in the United States. It's the most popular premium vehicle, electric or non-electric in California. And so what we've demonstrated to suppliers is just the enormity of how much customers are excited about what we're building as a brand in a company at this point at a high price point or premium segment. And what this brings in terms of taking our technology and now applying it to a wide spectrum of products across a multitude of very strong brands will provide us significant, I'd call it a step change in volume. And that'll allow us to achieve much more aggressive pricing from suppliers, so think components, chipsets, full PCBA, printed circuit board assemblies and all the associated content that relates to those hardware systems. So we're excited about the opportunity for meaningful bill of materials optimizations through this. And we also believe that the signal that this sends with Volkswagen Group, it's one of the largest car companies in the world with an outstanding set of products and really a high bar in terms of product excellence for them to make the decision to leverage and utilize our platform makes a real statement, and it puts us in a position of strength as we continue negotiating for cost improvements, not only in our R1 bill of materials, but importantly, as we're sourcing our bill of materials for R2 and R3, which, of course, have yet to launch. So this validation, we see is an important -- very important statement to the entire automotive supply chain and also an important statement to our customers, which is the strength of the technology that we've created and something we've talked about a lot in the past. But it's always wonderful to have that validation externally.

And our next question will come from the line of George Gianarikas from Canaccord Genuity.

You mentioned earlier that a few things will remain distinctly Rivian, including, obviously, the aesthetics, the battery, the autonomous platform, propulsion. I was wondering, how did the 2 companies land on electric architecture and software to be the 2 areas that you'll jointly develop in the future?

I've talked a lot about this in the past, George. And I would -- if we wind the clock back and look at partnerships and even in our own case, we looked at partnerships at a platform level where we're saying battery system and drive system, what we realized over the last few years is the enormous difficulty for incumbent existing auto manufacturers to develop their own full stack software because of the tight interlink to the electronics, the computers upon which that software runs. And the Tier 1 supply base, ironically starting way back with electronic fuel injection systems, has over the last half a century built a very complex, highly disaggregated -- led to a highly disaggregated ECU architecture where you have lots of small computers that linked to a very specific function or domain. And so you'll hear this called a domain-based control. So you'll have ECUs or controllers that speak to, let's say, body control or chassis control, or powertrain control or door module control or seat control. And all these separate ECUs, of course, connect, but it makes it very hard to develop a software platform that holistically runs across multiple different functions, actuators and systems in the vehicle. And so to create a zonal architecture where instead of having a computer or ECU for each function, but rather having a computer that's geographically located or is only located within the vehicle, you have to collapse a bunch of different functions around the geography in the vehicle. So you have a controller on the front of the vehicle, controller on the back of the vehicle, controller elsewhere on the vehicle. In our case, we have an east controller, west controller and a south controller. And those controllers are running functions that are physically closed. It minimizes harness length and it massively reduces the amount of complexity associated with over-the air updates. It massively reduces the amount of complexity with building the vehicle in terms of the number of compute platforms that need to go into it. And so the challenge for an incumbent existing OEM is if you build deep dependency on suppliers for making all these ECUs to flip the switch to move off of that, you have to both build deep expertise around computer design, ECU design, but also build the software stacks around on top of them, and then also have the functional expertise to create the software that's running across those zonal ECUs. And so this is something from the very, very beginning, we knew we wanted to do as a company. And in our Gen 1 vehicle, in order to move quickly and in order to launch, we allowed for more ECUs in the system. So as I said in my opening comments, we had 17 ECUs in our Gen 1 system that we designed, developed in-house. We consolidated those down to 7. And we didn't have to go negotiate across 2 or 3 different or 4 or 5 different Tier 1 suppliers to make that consolidation, but rather it was our own stack. And so I really deeply believe this is one of the hardest things for existing manufacturers to do, just because of the way historically the electronics and software space has evolved within automotive. And we, of course, didn't evolve in that same way. We were built -- I designed the company from the ground up to be incredibly strong and very deep in the space of electronics and software. And so with all that said, what this relationship allows us to do is to leverage those platforms to very quickly replace the distributed set of Tier 1-based ECUs with a much smaller number of zonal ECUs that's really thoughtfully optimized around cost and optimized around harness simplification, and facilitates and enables a much more modern approach to software and software architecture. And so the beauty of this as well is it doesn't have any vehicle packaging implications outside of having to fit a handful of ECUs into the vehicle. But it's not as if we have to commonize around the battery pack dimension or drive unit dimension or suspension architecture. But we're talking about systems that have thousands of dollars of costs, have enormous implications in terms of the product experience, but also allow for scalability and flexibility across very, very different form factors. And a great example of that is on our Gen 1 vehicle, it shares the exact same network architecture with our commercial vans, completely different application, completely different form factor. But because we own the entirety of the stack, we were able to share those. Now Gen 2, which we just launched, further increases the flexibility. So the proliferation across very different form factors, very different price points, is something that we're really excited about.

Our next question will come from the line of Shreyas Patil from Wolfe Research.

I just wanted to understand, I think in the release it mentioned that VW would gain access to Rivian's existing electronic architecture upon establishment of the joint venture. So just wanted to understand what they would be able to access. And just on the last point you made, RJ, what it seems that what you already have in the now refreshed R1, it sounds like a lot of that is going to be carried over into the joint venture and it's really more about applying it to lower-cost vehicles. But in that interim, is VW going to be able to essentially take what you already have on the R1 and deploy it into any of their vehicles ahead of that?

Thanks for the question. We obviously just launched our Gen 2 platform with lots of excitement from our customers. This has been a lead to move from domain-based architectures to zonal based architecture. And it's really the technology foundation that we will use for the future products. As I mentioned, the JV will first build the R2 platform, which will leverage on a lot of reuse from our Gen 2 architecture. Similarly, we have products from the Volkswagen Group which will leverage on very similar architecture. And then the beauty here is we'll be able to scale them up and down and really have significant savings coming from that.

We have time for one more question. And our last question will come from the line of Ron Jewsikow from Guggenheim Securities.

I believe you mentioned the potential for this to scale to other OEMs. I guess, just mechanically, would those hypothetical other OEMs buy into the current joint venture? Or would they buy product from the joint venture as prospective customers? And just a point of clarification, I guess, the ultimate intent of this joint venture, is it to be self-funding or profit-seeking post the capital infusion? Or is this just kind of a co-development mechanism?

Yes. Thanks, Ron. As I outlined a moment ago, we really believe what we've developed is industry-leading in terms of ECU consolidation and simplification and demonstrating a level of discipline in how the software stack has been built around that. And so we do believe there's applications beyond both Rivian and Volkswagen Group products. As I said before, our focus is on executing the road map we have in front of us, starting with R2 and followed, as we've said, and you've heard from Volkswagen Group, followed by Volkswagen Group products in the second half of this decade. Now, the specifics of how we might look at other business or other applications to the JV, those will be things we would work out in the future and certainly aren't in a position to postulate or comment on that today.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to RJ for any closing remarks.

Yes. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I know the call was scheduled without a lot of warning. So we appreciate the broad participation and the active discussion and questions we've had here today. Hopefully, what you've heard from myself, Wassym and Claire is a level of excitement around being able to leverage and utilize our technology, our software, our electronics, across many more different types of products, and as you heard from Wassym, across many more markets. And it really speaks to the mission of the business. I started the company with the objective of accelerating the transition off of fossil fuels and I deeply believe that that's only possible through the creation of highly compelling, really exciting product. And we certainly can do that through our own products. We see that with R1 as I referenced before, we're going to see that with R2 and R3. But we also are ecstatic about being able to do that through applying our technology into other products outside of our own brand, but within the VW Group umbrella, with products that are really focused on creating what, I think of as product excellence. And so this also represents, beyond just the scaling of our mission, it represents a really meaningful and, we think, thoughtful way to ensure our capital road map is secured in a way that not only provides the capital for us to continue scaling through the launch of R2 in Normal, but importantly, to support our efforts in Georgia with bringing up the midsize platform there and ultimately our path to being cash flow positive. And so this is an area that we've had lots of discussion on with a number of you, but it's an area that we feel is really well covered by this partnership and by this deal. So with that, again, I want to thank everybody for joining. And importantly, before we sign off here, I want to make sure I thank our team for all the amazing work that they've done. This is only -- this deal is only possible because of the dedicated efforts of the team and the many late nights and weekends and time that goes in developing our technology platform and making it what it is today. So, thank you to the team and again thank you for everyone for joining today.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.