U.S. electric automaker Rivian announced Monday it produced 1,015 vehicles in 2021 — a figure that is in accordance with assumptions that the organization brought down a month ago.
Rivian delivered 920 vehicles before the finish of 2021, as indicated by a release issued Monday. The production and delivery numbers joined with a WSJ report that Rivian’s COO left the organization last month sent shares down. Rivian shares shut 5.6% lower Monday to $81.44; shares fell another 3.3% in after market trading.
Rivian has more than 71,000 “pre-orders” (which means refundable reservations) for its R1T pickup trucks, as indicated by its letter to shareholders posted in December.
Rivian had at first designated production of 1,200 vehicles before the year’s over. Last month, organization executives including CEO RJ Scaringe cut those expectations, saying it would probably fall a couple hundred vehicles short because of supply chain issues and challenges of battery production.
During its earnings call in December, Scaringe referred to the production as a complex orchestra on two events.
“In ramping up a production system like this, it is, as I said before, a really complex orchestra,” Scaringe said. “So you have hundreds of suppliers providing thousands of parts, thousands of robots within the production facility operating to prescribe movements, and then thousands of team members assembling and working to put the vehicles together.”
Regardless of that brought down target, Scaringe noted during that call that the organization is “ramping largely as expected.”
“The battery constraint is really an artifact of just bringing up a highly automated line,” he said in December. “And as I said, that doesn’t represent any long-term challenges for us. We have a second line that’s coming on that will put the battery module production way out in front in terms of capacity of the other areas of the plant.”
As Rivian competitions to slope production, set up automakers GM and Ford are planning to launch their own electric pickup trucks. Ford said January 4 it will almost double production capacity of its upcoming electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck to 150,000 vehicles per year by mid-2023 because of customer demand. The first deliveries of F-150 Lightning pickup trucks are expected in spring 2022.