Rivian, the American manufacturer of the electric R1T and R1S, announces its first quarter results. The now listed company is diving into the red and says it will not achieve the targets set for this year. However, Rivian does not give up and seizes the opportunity to present a plan for a new factory.
It is the first time that Rivian as a publicly traded company has published figures. In November, the pickup manufacturer was listed on Wall Street, with which the start-up raked in a considerable amount of money: approximately €10.3 billion. Moreover, Rivian was suddenly worth more than the established American manufacturers Ford and General Motors. Rivian just isn’t turning black just yet. In the past quarter, a net loss of $1.2 billion, converted more than €1 billion, was recorded. The turnover amounted to only €887,000. This low turnover is mainly because Rivian has yet to start production of the R1T and R1S. This process requires the necessary investments. In addition, Rivian has an open mega-order of 100,000 vans for Amazon.
The R1T and R1S are now rolling off the production line, but not yet at a very high rate. Rivian had set the goal of putting 1,200 cars on the road before the end of this year, but stated in the publication of the quarterly figures that the final number of cars produced will probably be ‘several hundred copies’ lower. CEO RJ Scaringe explains in an explanation that Rivian is struggling with increasing production. Tesla proves that higher production does not immediately guarantee profit. In fact, Scaringe is now in the same boat as Elon Musk was a few years ago. So it remains to be seen whether and if so when Rivian can show black numbers for the first time.
New factories
Rivian will continue to invest heavily in the construction for the time being. The start-up is going to build a new factory in the US state of Georgia, costing approximately €4.4 billion. Production should start there from 2024. The maximum production capacity of the factory will be 400,000 cars per year and the complex will provide work for more than 7,500 people. Currently, Rivian only has a factory in Illinois, where it plans to expand production capacity from 150,000 to 200,000 cars per year. In the meantime, Rivian is also looking at possibilities for a production line in Europe. VDL Nedcar may be a contender for this.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl