Rivian’s VP of Manufacturing Tim Fallon shared this look back at 2022 – the company’s first full year of production, and a view ahead to 2023.
There are no doubts that 2022 was a very challenging, but also a fruitful year for Rivian, which according to the video produced 25,000 electric vehicles – 25,051 to be precise. Out of that, 24,337 were “factory gated”, while 20,332 were delivered to customers.
The company’s manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois runs two shifts and already achieved a record of 200 vehicles produced in a single day. Assuming that such a rate would be constant throughout the year, we are talking about roughly 70,000+ vehicles annually.
The next step will be the addition of a night shift to further increase the production of electric vehicles – Rivian R1T pickup, Rivian R1S SUV and Rivian EDV vans.
“We continue to see enormous growth and progress in every area of our business, and this is the direct result of our team’s incredible efforts every single day.
We recently added a second shift at our plant, which means we can build vehicles around the clock and continue to ramp production.”
An equally important thing for Rivian is improvements and changes applied to all models, which – as we understand – are the result of learning from the initial production, as well as responses to some parts supply constraints. That’s normal for a young start-up, which must adjust some processes and designs to improve the overall cost efficiency.
On the horizon are new solutions, including powertrain and battery versions, so this year also should be very interesting for Rivian.
The increased production volume should help to reduce the order backlog (which in the case of R1T/R1S pre-orders exceeds 100,000) and bring the company a step closer to financial profitability, which is always is the key for the long-term future.
