Isn’t the Rivian pickup a competitor to the F-150 Lightning?
Why would Ford be investing in a competitor?
Why would Ford be investing in a competitor?
At this point no one can get either... so no problem.
It happens all the time as part of a risk/reward analysis. It's a way for a company to hedge against competition (i.e. if your competitor might one day steal some of your business anyway might as well get some of that lost profit back by being a part owner). This is especially the case for a new venture that the older company isn't sure will work well (don't want to risk tarnishing an established brand like the mega selling F-150 truck if pickup truck owners decide to hate EV trucks like they're girly-man trucks). But Ford doesn't want to be left out of a new market if the EV truck thing becomes more popular. By having the EV truck as another brand name, Ford was hoping to get some reward with little risk.
Think about how much Coca-Cola was losing the soda wars as Generation X was leaving Coca-Cola and going to Pepsi. To change that Coke tried New Coke, failed miserably, and for a while tarnished their brand (even prior loyal Coke drinkers took a while to go back to drinking Coca-Cola Classic after Coke had gone all in on marketing New Coke and it failed). But Coke still had the problem of a future generation not liking them as much as Generation X. So Coke bought into Dr. Pepper -- if Dr. Pepper became popular among Gen X (which it did) Coke would enjoy some of that profit even if they still hated some of those soda drinkers going away from Coke, which they seemed to be doing anyway but to Pepsi which would leave Coke getting none of that money. But if Dr. Pepper hadn't gained in popularity and had fizziled out, it wouldn't have tarnished the Coke brand name further (less risk than trying a new dark cola product under the Coke brand name).
What rich geniuses call being visionary...
What you and I call throwing good money after bad.