Much less loss
The American EV manufacturer Rivian is coming out of a deep valley, but can now finally report something positive in terms of sales. The company had its best quarter ever and is raising its sales forecast for this year.
If we have learned one thing in recent years, it is that setting up a new car brand is extremely difficult. EV builder Rivian also went through a deep, hopeless valley at first, but now things finally seem to be improving. The brand produced 16,304 vehicles in the past quarter, more than ever before in such a three-month period. 15,564 cars were actually delivered to customers. For comparison: a quarter earlier, 13,992 Rivians were built and 12,640 delivered, in Q3 2022 this was 7,363 and 6,584 respectively.
The higher sales figures also led to more income. Turnover in the past quarter was 1,337 million dollars, compared to 536 million a year earlier. Rivian attributes this to higher sales, but also to a more efficient working method. At Rivian, the higher turnover still does not mean ‘more profit’ but ‘less loss’. The total for the third quarter came to 477 million dollars, compared to a loss of 917 million in the third quarter of 2022. The upward trend therefore seems to have been found, and there is reason to suspect that it will continue for a while. Rivian has just announced that the Commercial Van, which was initially developed for a single customer, can also be purchased by companies other than Amazon. This brings the total number of fully electric production models to 3: the Rivian R1T pickup, the Rivian R1S SUV and therefore the ‘RCV’, or Rivian Commercial Van.
We cannot find Rivian making any concrete export plans in the latest results overview. The brand casually mentions in the Commercial Van that customers ‘worldwide’ can benefit from its benefits, but does not yet say if and when it will enter markets outside North America. We wait quietly.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl