So far, all of the competitors have had the clean, polished look that you’d expect from a consumer goods product. But Rivian can also do the scary and hard-edged, as shown by a newly released commercial step-van that will soon be seen all over North America. Fleet Owner says that Rivian and Morgan Olson, a big commercial vehicle manufacturer, worked together on this van, which looks like a Jeep Wrangler that has been to anger management classes and is now calm down. The company that made the USPS’s Grumman LLV mail trucks is still the same, even though it used to be called Grumman Olson. You may have seen this exact C250 step-van body before because it is owned by JB Poindexter & Co., a company that makes business vehicles and works with FedEx and UPS. But there is no Rivian Amazon car below it without this face. This device’s chassis is the same as the chassis of the Rivian Commercial Van. It has the same 100 kWh LFP battery, Rivian interface, and Rivian software stack. However, it has been improved and will now be called the Morgan Olson C250E. Canada Post will use it to move mail and goods between towns in the Great White North. So, you drive it with your right hand. The C250E is expected to be used in the United States as well since it has ties to some of the best package carriers there. Or, more accurately, another strange thing powered by Rivian. This step-van might not be the first car made possible by the partnership; there may be many more. JB Poindexter & Co. CEO John Poindexter told Fleet Owner, “We plan to put [the Rivian chassis] under a number of bodies or develop prototypes with individual customers who will be interested in the combination of body technology.” Commercial cars with gross weight limits of less than 10,000 pounds, like grocery delivery vans, could be one of the possible uses. Making money from such a big market would also explain why Rivian is said to have wanted to end its deal with Amazon, which might have stopped the growth of the van market that Rivian is going after. Even if the final product isn’t very appealing, Rivian can take advantage of new ways to make money since the market for luxury EVs has reached a peak, and the R2 will be available for a while.
