Jeff Bezos rolls up to Blue Origin launch in SUV from Tesla competitor
Before former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made it to space, he had to make it to the launch pad.
Bezos and his brother Mark, as well as 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk and 18-year-old Dutch passenger Oliver Daeme, piled into a Rivian R1S SUV on Tuesday morning ahead of their flight to space. Later, they would ride a New Shepard rocket from Bezos' private spaceflight company, Blue Origin.
Rivian's first electric truck and SUV aren't available yet, but Amazon is a big investor in the American EV startup. Like leading a $700 million round of funding big. Rivian is even making electric Amazon delivery vans.
You can spot the Rivian that took the crew to the rocket launch site in Van Horn, Texas, around 48 minutes into the video below.
The electric SUV is a rare sight thanks partly to the pandemic. The Rivian R1T truck was supposed to arrive by the end of this month, followed by the R1S SUV. Now the electric truck isn't expected until September, and the SUV that Bezos rode in isn't expected until later in the fall. The truck starts at $73,000, while the SUV is slightly more at $75,500. Both will have more than 300 miles of range.
Amazon's electric delivery trucks are still on schedule, according to CNBC.
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Topics Amazon Electric Vehicles
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
