The TeslaChallenger Rivian is postponing the construction of a factory worth around five billion dollars USA until further notice. The move will initially save Rivian $2.25 billion (a good two billion euros), said company boss R.J. Scaringe (41) on Thursday at the presentation of new models. The new factory in the US state of Georgia was originally intended to build the cheaper future electric SUV R2. Now the existing factory in the city of Normal, Illinois, will produce it instead. This will allow the model to be delivered more quickly.
On social media, the presentation of new models overshadows the car manufacturer’s problems. The company says it wants to start delivering the smaller “R2” off-road vehicles with a starting price of around $45,000 in the first half of 2026. This means it will be around $30,000 cheaper than Rivian’s larger debut R1. Rivian also introduced a new crossover brand “R3” – a cross between an SUV and a sedan. This should be even cheaper than the “R2” and will be delivered after the cheap SUV. The prospect of the market launch of lower-cost SUVs from the US electric car maker Rivian drove the shares up on Wednesday. The shares climbed more than 9 percent in late US trading.
Rivian has long been considered one of the strongest challengers to Tesla among pure electric car manufacturers – but is still much smaller. Last year, Tesla built almost 1.85 million vehicles – and Rivian a good 57,000. This year too, the Californian company wants to build roughly the same number of cars instead of increasing production. Rivian cited, among other things, the high interest rates as justification. The planned factory in Georgia should have a production capacity of up to 400,000 vehicles per year in the future.
The electric car maker also recently cut personnel costs due to stuttering demand and temporary factory closures. A total of 10 percent of jobs will be lost, the company said in February. In addition to falling customer orders due to increased interest rates, the company cited downtime due to factory renovations as reasons.
Even Tesla didn’t dare forecast sales
The at times rapid growth of the electric car market has recently cooled down noticeably. Even Tesla has not dared to make a sales forecast for the current year. Rivian builds electric delivery vans for Amazon and is active in two car segments that are generally very popular in the USA: pickups and SUVs. But also the American car heavyweights like GM and ford With their large electric models in the categories, they recently found that consumers were more likely to choose the cheaper combustion engine and hybrid versions. Rivian ended last year with a loss of $5.4 billion on $4.4 billion in sales.