RV Tech, a joint venture between Volkswagen Group and Rivian, has completed a successful winter test program, it said this morning. The partnership was created in 2024 when VW Group announced it would invest $5.8 billion in the American electric vehicle maker to gain access to Rivian’s expertise in vehicle software and electronic architecture. VW Group initially paid Rivian $1 billion in cash, with further payments over time: the completion of the winter testing milestone should unlock a further $1 billion payment.
VW’s decision to turn to Rivian followed a tortuous history of its own internal software development. It created a new division in 2019 just to develop software for cars, then immediately bit off more than it could chew by trying to simultaneously develop three different vehicle operating systems. Things went the opposite of smoothly, with software-related delays to the two new platforms used by cars like the VW ID.4 and Porsche Macan that led to chairman Herbert Diess’ firing and the third platform delayed until late in this decade.
Rivian, meanwhile, had no such problems developing its own vehicle electronic architecture and software, starting from a clean sheet unencumbered by generations of legacy cruft. As a startup automaker, Rivian needs money, and since Volkswagen needs better tech, the joint venture makes a lot of sense.
To the Arctic Circle
Automakers love testing cars in the Arctic Circle. It’s about as cold an environment as anyone’s going to drive a car, so if you can make your systems reliable in those extreme temperatures, they should be just fine in milder winters. And there are plenty of frozen lakes, with vast flat expanses of ice thick enough to drive cars across with no worries. So you can test chassis tuning and traction and stability control work at the same time.
A team of engineers from Volkswagen, Audi, Scout (VW Group’s new electrified SUV brand), and RV Tech decamped to Arjeplog in Sweden to test several development vehicles in the Swedish winter, including an Audi, a Scout, and the ID.EVERY1, a new entry-level VW EV destined for Europe with a targeted starting price of less than 20,000 euros ($23,000). After successfully completing vehicle dynamics work and testing the platform’s over-the-air software updatability, the bosses signed off on the program after sampling the results.
“We are accelerating toward the future,” said VW Group CEO Oliver Blume. “With the successful completion of the winter tests, our joint venture once again demonstrates the speed and precision of its work. The close integration between the joint venture, our brands, and the Group follows a clear objective: to excite people with products and technologies that set new standards. This is how we are driving development forward across the Volkswagen Group—with the ambition to become the global automotive tech driver.”
New EVs with the RV Tech zonal architecture should start appearing next year. There seems little chance that VW will bring the small and cheap ID.EVERY1 to North America, but expect to see RV Tech’s work inside new electric Audis and Scouts (and presumably Porsches) that will be sold here before too long.
