Rivian has been very busy as it moved from talking about its electric vehicles (EVs) to actually selling them. It made an electric pickup truck and an electric SUV, and it also planned to have a big sale of its company’s stock. It built electric delivery vans for Amazon and wanted to do the same for other businesses. Now, it wants to sell a cheaper SUV that could make Rivian a top player in the EV market for many years. It also wanted to make a whole new factory in Georgia to build these vehicles.
With so many things happening, it was hard to know exactly what Rivian’s future would look like.
But things have changed.
Recently, the company announced new versions of its first two consumer vehicles, the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV. These vehicles are now more advanced in technology, and Rivian also made them simpler to build, which will help to reduce costs.
Rivian also decided not to build the new factory in Georgia right now. Instead, it will focus more on its existing factory in Illinois. This decision will save Rivian a lot of money, about $2.25 billion, and it can concentrate all its efforts on one factory.
These changes mean that Rivian’s immediate future is now clearer than ever before. The company needs to sell these updated vehicles at a profit to keep going until it can start selling the cheaper R2 SUV to more people. It knows exactly what it needs to do to get there.
“With Rivian’s latest move to update the R1T and R1S EVs, you can see how the company plans to move forward,” Corey Cantor, who works with electric vehicles, said in an email. “If they are successful, they can use what they learned to make the R2 and eventually the R3.”
Other EV startups have a tougher road ahead.
For example, Lucid Motors has a good product in the Lucid Air sedan, but it’s been hard to find buyers. Lucid Motors is hoping its new Gravity SUV will be more popular, but there are no guarantees.
Canoo and Faraday Future have faced many challenges, and Fisker is struggling with sales and quality problems.
It won’t be easy for Rivian either. It expects to see little growth this year compared to last year, and it may need more money to keep going.
But Rivian believes that the changes to the R1 lineup will help it make a profit by the end of this year. This is important because Rivian is currently losing money on every car it sells. If Rivian wants to stay in business long enough to sell the cheaper R2 SUV, it needs these updated vehicles to sell well.
“The path ahead is clearer now,” Cantor said. “But Rivian needs to make a profit and sell a lot of EVs to be successful.”
