Rivian will build a second, $5 billion EV plant in Georgia
Amazon-backed EV startup Rivian is going to build a second factory in Georgia where it will assemble up to 400,000 electric vehicles per year. The company made the announcement on Thursday alongside state representatives after months of speculation over where it would look to expand its manufacturing footprint. It’s expected to invest $5 billion into the facility.
Rivian is already building its first electric pickup trucks at a former Mitsubishi factory in Normal, Illinois. But the company is getting ready to start building its electric SUV and is committed to producing 100,000 custom delivery vans for Amazon, so it has been searching for a place to create a factory from the ground up.
Rivian had been in talks with Forth Worth, Texas to build the new factory there and was evaluating “multiple locations” as recently as August. The new factory in Georgia will be built about an hour east of Atlanta and will employ thousands of workers. Rivian says it plans to build a “co-located” battery cell production facility in the area as well.
Founded in 2009, Rivian took a slow path to where it is today. It didn’t come out of stealth mode until 2018, shortly before it debuted the pickup truck (the R1T) and SUV (the R1S) at that year’s LA Auto Show. Since then, though, it has been on an incredible rise. It has hired thousands of employees, collected billions of dollars in funding from Amazon, Ford, T. Rowe Price, and others, and recently went public in one of the biggest IPOs in US history.
The startup’s grand ambitions come with a high price tag, though, as it has said it expects to spend $8 billion through the end of 2023.
Rivian has taken around 55,000 preorders for the R1T and R1S combined and has said that it will take two years to make all those vehicles alongside the Amazon delivery vans. (In Thursday’s regulatory filing, the startup said the number of preorders has gone up to 71,000). But the company has other future models in the works and plans to sell non-delivery vans to other commercial customers, so it needs more capacity. The Illinois plant is currently only able to make as many as 150,000 vehicles per year, though Rivian has said it believes that can be stretched to 200,000 by 2023.
Developing…
Amazon-backed EV startup Rivian is going to build a second factory in Georgia where it will assemble up to 400,000 electric vehicles per year. The company made the announcement on Thursday alongside state representatives after months of speculation over where it would look to expand its manufacturing footprint. It’s expected…
