A lot is happening with our new adventure. We’ve launched our YouTube Channel and podcast, our move to Florida is happening even if we can’t believe it, and we have disappointing Rivian news.
We’ve launched our YouTube channel. If you have subscribed to our newsletter, there is no need to subscribe there because we’ll share the videos here. If you don’t want our newsletter in your inbox but want to follow our journey, subscribing to the YouTube channel (and selecting the bell to alert you to new posts) will work to keep you in the loop.
Today’s video is a short introduction. As we move forward, we’ll have more and more to share.
Typically, we’ll share the audio portion of our videos as a podcast. The audio for today’s video is our first podcast episode. There will be many more to come.
Moving to Florida
We’ve previously announced that we’re selling our condo in Salt Lake City and moving to Jacksonville, Florida. Earlier, we noted that we’d written an offer to buy a condo there. We fully expected that deal to close, but, long story short, we pulled our bid when we discovered some unsettling news about the construction.
Now, we’ve written another offer on another condo and as of this writing we’re negotiating toward a final agreement. The Florida one is a bit larger than the one we have here in Salt Lake, so our future will involve a bit of furniture shopping. More importantly, it has an oversized two-car garage, something we haven’t had in our family for more than 30 years!
That garage will give us a place to park the Rivian and keep our Chevy Bolt. Critically, it will provide us with a safe and secure place to charge them. We’ve also ordered an Aptera to replace the Bolt. The Aptera is a three-wheeled vehicle that looks like a vehicle George Jetson would drive. It can go five times as far per kWh as the Rivian, so we’ll drive that whenever we’re not towing the trailer. We’ll have more to share about the Aptera in the future.
Disappointing News About the Rivian
When we pre-ordered the Rivian in September, we anticipated that with production starting soon (it did begin just weeks after we ordered ours), we could get ours by next summer. There are clues that we were overly optimistic.
While Rivian is now delivering trucks to customers, the company has given us no direct, personal information about when it will deliver our vehicle. At the time of the company’s November initial public offering (IPO), the company indicated it had about 150,000 orders on the books. We hope that number increased a lot with the news surrounding the beginning of production and the IPO, putting us near (we hope) order number 100,000.
Rivian has notified some customers when their trucks will arrive. We were not among them. The dates given ran through next fall, almost a year out now. Since we didn’t get a notification, we think our delivery will be later.
To tow the trailer long distances, we ordered the Rivian with the “Max” pack to tow the trailer long distances, a massive 175 kWh battery that allows the truck to go over 400 miles (without a trailer). Sadly, rumors suggest that Rivian will produce the trucks with that feature last. I can’t even bring myself to type the word: we may not get our R1T until 2023.
That will give us more time to find and equip the perfect trailer. We’re going shopping soon!
Sharing, Moving and Facing Disappointment