Electric vehicle maker Rivian will indefinitely halt plans for a $5 billion production facility, the company announced in a corporate event on Thursday, as the company looks to cut costs following a major round of layoffs last month even as EV competition continues to heat up.
Rivian unveiled two new EV models on Thursday, and halted plans for a second facility in Georgia.
Rivian founder and CEO R.J. Scaringe announced the project’s pause in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, saying the automaker will assemble recently unveiled EV models at the company’s existing plant in Illinois.
Those models—the R2 crossover and the R3—had been slated to be produced in Georgia with an arrival time of 2026, with the vehicles boasting 300 miles of range and an acceleration of 0 to 60 mph in three seconds.
Rivian admitted on Thursday that in order to launch the R2 “with a considerable reduction in the capital required for its launch,” it plans to move production to its plant in Normal, Illinois, saying that approach “considerably reduces risk to the launch and associated ramp.”
Plans for a plant outside Atlanta will now be delayed to an undetermined time, the automaker said, adding the plant “remains an extremely important part of [Rivian’s] strategy to scale production of R2 and R3.”
The cutback is just the latest for Rivian, which earlier this year laid off more than 1,000 employees, or 10% of its workforce, in its third round of job cuts in less than two years (Rivian cut another 6% of its staff last February).
Shares of Rivian skyrocketed on Thursday, climbing more than 12% to just over $12, its biggest jump since July and a rebound from the company’s stock woes last month in the wake of major layoffs. Rivian’s shares have still tumbled more than 40% on the year, and more than 90% since its peak at its November 2021 debut.
Rivian had planned to build the manufacturing plant 40 miles outside Atlanta at a facility capable of producing roughly 400,000 units per year once operational. The company started the process of grading the site for construction, and said in a statement last October it hopes to hold a groundbreaking ceremony in “early 2024.” The company had even said in a regulatory filing in March 2022 it intends to “expand [its]
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