Ford-backed Rivian is a fairly new name in the automaking world, even if the company has existed for several years now. The upstart EV maker just launched its first product – the R1T pickup, a few months ago, and has thus far experienced the same sort of production issues other automakers, including Ford, have been facing for some time. Regardless, Rivian still has big plans for the future, and that includes achieving 10 percent of the overall EV market by 2030, according to Reuters.
“We’re absolutely making progress,” CEO R.J. Scaringe said during a recent Wolfe Research conference. “The plant is starting to ramp nicely.” Scaringe also noted that the automaker plans “to build out a portfolio … to allow us to really work toward building a position of 10 percent market share within the EV space.”
Though Rivian has ramped up production of the R1T and R1S SUV in recent weeks, the automaker is still cranking out very few units, and Scaringe also noted that the company closed its Normal, Illinois plant for the first 10 days of January as it made changes aimed at helping to increase production, including replacing hard-to-get chipsets with more accessible ones. After building just over 1,000 vehicles in 2021, Scaringe also admitted that the semiconductor chip shortage remains the automaker’s “most painful” constraint.
Rivian is currently planning to build a second, $5 billion dollar assembly plant outside Atlanta, Georgia, but it has faced fierce local opposition to that project. Though it still holds a considerable stake in Rivian that it plans on keeping, Ford CEO Jim Farley has admitted that he sees the company as a “threat,” while the two companies recently scrapped plans to develop an EV together.
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Comments
Things are booming now, with government money and incentives, and the future is looking promising based on recent financial realities, but wait until the next recession. Then we will see and watch the weak EV companies get weeded out and who the strong are and who will survive. Stay tuned.
If the Ford Authority had a Comics page this story would be on it!!