They definitely have a real product. They demoed their EV truck at the LA Auto Show this past year. They haven't made it in mass quantities, so at this point its more like the original Tesla Roadster, but at least one of their products actually exists.
They have a shell and some technology right now. Has a real person driven one and can confirm it does 410 miles? Or the claimed 0-60? I haven't seen that anywhere and I've been looking, would be happy to be wrong.
I get uneasy when I see a company without proven tech spend more time on marketing videos than showing off the car. If it works, where is the footage of it working up to par?
As a general rule automakers don't normally show off prototypes of future production vehicles in action, except for test vehicles not intended to be produced in quantity.
The reasoning is that there is very limited positive upside from showing off an ugly prototype with all its beta-testing flaws, but a huge potential for a bad demo to kill the market prospects for the model.
Actually most automakers do show off prototypes but they usually classify them as one of the following:
Concept: Might as well be cardboard cutouts. A physical representation of pie-in-the-sky design with little basis in reality. An example would be the VW ID Buggy.
Functional: Usually a Frankenstein vehicle cobbled together from catalog parts with intended purpose of vetting a design or idea. An example would be the EV and Hybrid variants of the Porsche 718 Boxster.
Manufacturing: Very close to the final production model but still with a few kinks. Examples would be the Honda e Prototype, or the Ford Mustang Shelby S560
Rivian doesn't give any clear indication of what they're showing off but want you to believe it's the later when it could be the former.
Musk says a lot of things that aren't true because he's unwilling to listen to expert advice. A lot of the "hell" that Tesla has been through the past year--especially with the logistics--are nonissues for everyone else because the solutions are either industry SOP are such basic tasks that expertise isn't required (like properly labeling your imported products...).
Rivian will be building products with Ford's assistance (and Ford will be building products using Rivian's tech). Ford has been building cars at scale for more than a century, and I'd bet a pretty penny that Rivian will take their advice on how to structure their manufacturing process.
Tesla would absolutely still exist. Tesla wasn't founded by Musk, it was founded by two other guys as an EV boutique manufacturer that was profitable selling handmade EVs based on other carmaker's frames.
Indeed, Gwynne Shotwell over at SpaceX shows what a Tesla without Musk would look like: functional, industry-leading, and with a history of actually reaching its goals on the timelines set forth.
Musk is an arrogant blowhard who is trying to cover for his failings. The Musk ventures that are going well, like SpaceX, aren't managed by him on a day-to-day basis. He's not a good CEO and from information publicly available has no business managing people.
A lot of people are tired of his fanboys. It’s similar to how people reacted to Steve Jobs fans.
Personally I think Musk is smart but highly overrated. He makes a lot of dumb mistakes by ignoring advice, and seems to have a lot of impulse control issues. As an ideas man he’s one of the best, but hike badly needs an “adult in the room” to moderate his worst impulses.
