For those of you that don’t follow the electric vehicle industry, Rivian is an American electric vehicle automaker and automotive technology company that was founded in 2009 in Irvine, California. Along with Lucid Motors, these two companies are debatably some of Tesla’s biggest competitors in the EV industry. Rivian is currently producing the R1T pickup truck and the R1S sport utility vehicle. However, back in July 2022, Elon Musk stated that both companies are trending towards bankruptcy unless something significantly changes within the company.
On Monday, October 3, 2022, Rivian announced that it produced over 7,000 vehicles in the third quarter, which is the highest quarterly total to date. This dramatic increase in vehicle production was due to the company's 67% increase in production staff during the third quarter. Rivian originally expected to produce about 50,000 vehicles in 2022 but was later halved in March due to global supply chain issues affecting its goals to increase production. Nevertheless, the company confirmed on Monday that they are still on track to meet their goal of 25,0000 vehicles in 2022. Shortly following their quarterly announcement Rivian stock rose roughly 8.8% during after-hours trading.
Rivian also announced former executive vice president and credit card divisional CIO at Capital One, Diane Lye, as Rivian’s first chief information officer (CIO). Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said that Lye’s former experience scaling global technology is critical to the development and growth at Rivian. Overall, in 2022, Rivian has produced 14,317 vehicles, leaving them 3 months to produce roughly 10,000 more. Perhaps Diane Lye is what the company needs to meet its annual production goals and reverse the bankruptcy trend that Elon Musk predicted. Whether the company meets its annual production goals or not, it appears that they are slowly starting to move up in the EV industry.
Honestly, I have never heard of Rivan before. It is still great to see companies joining the EV industry so Tesla won't become a monopoly. With the change in public's perception of Elon Musk, it might even be Tesla that ends up not making it.
As someone who doesn't stay up too much on cars, I can say that I have seen a few of these models around. Although not as popular as other hybrid or fully electric cars, I have recently seen an increase in these specific makes around especially the west end of Los Angeles. I think this article is extremely fascinating and brings up a lot of great points.
I wonder what will happen to Tesla if Rivian becomes more popular on the road; being both electric vehicles. Tesla is dominating this industry so it will be interesting to see if they can be taken over by popularity from another brand like Rivian. I also heard about Rivian working with Amazon regarding producing trucks for their business. I also wonder how that will effect the brand's value and popularity.
Two of my close friends actually work for Rivian right now, they got hired right out of college and have been telling me about the supply chain issues and cut of production. I find Rivian to be an exceptional company in regards to the actual product and its design; they have overall produced a beautiful vehicle overall. I know that they sponsor / work with a lot of people in extreme sports and in general adventurous people. This is so that they can target more travel-lenient people who would appreciate an electrical truck for camping, hiking, etc. Maybe they can focus more heavily on this market to increase their sales and growth.
From the perspective of someone who isn't super involved in the car scene, I personally haven't even seen these around which is interesting. I'm so used to seeing Teslas or other hybrid models that as the average consumer I can't even really fathom the idea of another company making electric vehicles. Knowing the path that Elon Musk is moving down currently though, it'd be awesome to see a company like this come in and take down the monopoly that Tesla has on the electric car game right now.