Maybe Rivian should focus more on getting product successfully out from Normal, rather than jumping the gun on a 2nd plant already.

4 hours ago, balthazar said:

Maybe Rivian should focus more on getting product successfully out from Normal, rather than jumping the gun on a 2nd plant already.

Companies can work on two things at once especially when they get IPOs as large as Rivian has. Rivian is intentionally throttling production out of Normal because they learned from Teslas failures when starting up production.  Rivian also has a big fat 500,000 vehicle contract to build vans for Amazon they need to start getting working on.

Rivian's Amazon contract is 100K units (over 3 years), not 500K.

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Allow me to restate then: Maybe Rivian should 'intentionally throttle back' on building a 2nd assembly plant until product demand comes remotely close to capacity.

33K units of cargo vans + maybe 50K units of Rivian trucks is 83K annually.
Rivian plant capacity : 200K.

Amazon also announced a deal to buy ProMaster EVs from Stellantis starting in 2023, that reduces the potential for additional Rivian purchases...sounds like Amazon is going with multiple vendors for vans rather than eggs in one basket approach.

7 hours ago, balthazar said:

Rivian's Amazon contract is 100K units (over 3 years), not 500K.

- - - - -
Allow me to restate then: Maybe Rivian should 'intentionally throttle back' on building a 2nd assembly plant until product demand comes remotely close to capacity.

33K units of cargo vans + maybe 50K units of Rivian trucks is 83K annually.
Rivian plant capacity : 200K.

That assumes no other products in the pipeline and also assumes production for only the US.

5 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

That assumes no other products in the pipeline and also assumes production for only the US.

I think it's been mentioned they have other products planned...

8 hours ago, balthazar said:

Rivian's Amazon contract is 100K units (over 3 years), not 500K.

- - - - -
Allow me to restate then: Maybe Rivian should 'intentionally throttle back' on building a 2nd assembly plant until product demand comes remotely close to capacity.

33K units of cargo vans + maybe 50K units of Rivian trucks is 83K annually.
Rivian plant capacity: 200K.

True the 100K is over 3 years but with options for more and that is where the 500K has come in if they elect to activate all options from Rivian. Meanwhile Amazon is buying EVs from everyone for all over the world. They just placed a 10,000 EV van with a new EV startup in India to get converted over there.

Indian EV startup EVage raises $28 million, will build electric vans for Amazon (hindustantimes.com)

Amazon has stated they want the bulk of their last mile delivery fleet worldwide to be mostly EVs by 2030 unlike UPS or FedEx that has stated 2035 and 2040. Would seem Amazon is planning to compete big time with emission free delivery autos.

Rivian has also started to take orders for other countries like Canada and Europe, Asia comes online sometime in 2022. For now as they scout for locations, UK is the latest site they are in talks about, but until they have plants elsewhere for production, Normal will be the site as well as Georgia.

1 hour ago, Robert Hall said:

I think it's been mentioned they have other products planned...

Yes, Rivian CEO has 6 other EVs planned to come out over the next 3 to 5 years that include cars too. Be interesting to see how this works out and how fast they do end up ramping up.