NEXT-GEN RIVIAN PRODUCTS DELAYED UNTIL AT LEAST 2026

While Rivian continues to power through various setbacks, and outlook is still optimistic, the company is roughly 11,000 units short right now of its 25,000 unit build goal set earlier this year. The plan was to meet that goal sooner than later, in order to make way for its R2 platform. This next-generation architecture and battery technology is said to provide a smaller and more affordable building foundation for Rivian going forward, with hopes of making Rivian a global brand name. But because there’s such a tremendous backlog of unfulfilled Rivian R1T, R1S, and Amazon delivery vans, the R2 architecture is being pushed back from what was 2025 to at least 2026, per the latest reports.

Hopefully this isn’t the beginning of a continuous delay cycle as we’ve seen with the Tesla Cybertruck, but that’s another story. Rivian recently released its earnings and the numbers show that the company took a $1.72 billion loss despite bringing in $536 million. Per Reuters, the company took a $1.23 billion loss last year and its $536 million revenue stream is $15 million short of its expected $551 million forecast.

Despite this, Rivian’s future still seems bright. The company announced they have added a second manufacturing shift at the Normal, Illinois plant in an effort to boost production. The company is also working on its massive (2,000 acre) $5 billion Georgia plant that is expected to push out a whopping 400,000 units a year when it becomes fully operational. Those numbers would make quick work of the over 100,000 pre-orders it has on file in addition to its Amazon contract to build delivery vans for the e-commerce juggernaut. Only 1,000 of those delivery trucks have been produced so far.

In addition to all of this, more good news. The company revealed that at the end of the third quarter of 2022 they had $13.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. The lump sum is enough to finance operations and expansion through 2025. Until the Rivian R2 platform arrives, we can all bask in the glory that are the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S both of which have already seen thousands of deliveries.