Rivian produced slightly more than 1,000 electric vehicles in 2021
Rivian produced slightly more than 1,000 electric vehicles in 2021
It was announced on Monday by Rivian, an electric vehicle manufacturer based in the United States, that the company will produce 1,015 vehicles in 2021, which is in line with the company's revised expectations from last month.
By the end of 2021, Rivian will have delivered 920 vehicles, according to a press release issued on Monday morning. The production and delivery figures, combined with a Wall Street Journal report that Rivian's chief operating officer had resigned earlier this month, contributed to the stock's decline. Monday's closing price of $81.44 was 5.6 percent lower than the previous day's closing price; shares fell an additional 3.3 percent in after-hours trading.
More than 71,000 "pre-orders" (refundable reservations) for Rivian's R1T pickup trucks have been received, according to a letter to shareholders sent in December.
According to Rivian's initial projections, the company would produce 1,200 vehicles by the end of the year. According to CEO RJ Scaringe and other company executives, the company is likely to fall short by a few hundred vehicles due to supply chain issues and manufacturing challenges, which they stated last month in a statement.
During the company's December earnings call, Scaringe made two references to the production process as a complicated orchestra.
"As I previously stated, ramping up a production system like this is like orchestrating a very complicated performance," Scaringe explained further. There are hundreds of suppliers supplying thousands of parts to the manufacturing facility. Thousands of robots operate within the manufacturing facility, and thousands of team members work together to assemble and assemble the vehicles.
Although the target has been reduced, Scaringe stated on the conference call that the company is "generally ramping as expected."
According to him, "the battery constraint is primarily an artifact of ramping up a highly automated line," which he explained in December. "We are not facing any long-term difficulties as a result of this, as I previously stated. There is a second line about to be installed that will significantly increase the capacity of our battery module production line when compared with our other production lines throughout the facility."
Meanwhile, established automakers General Motors and Ford are preparing to introduce their own electric pickup trucks, which will compete with Rivian's. In response to customer demand, Ford announced on January 4 that it will nearly double the annual production capacity of its upcoming electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck to 150,000 units by mid-2023, from the current capacity of 80,000 units. The first F-150 Lightning pickup trucks will be delivered in the spring of 2022, according to Ford.
