Rivian has determined the location for its planned second US plant: It will be built east of Atlanta in the state of Georgia and, when completed, will be able to produce up to 400,000 electric vehicles per year. The start of construction is planned for the summer of 2022 and the start of production for 2024.
The plant is to be located in the counties Morgan and Walton, there a “carbon-conscious campus” is planned, as the company announces. However, the communication only mentions vehicle production with up to 400,000 units per year. In the summer there were still rumors that Rivian was planning a combined vehicle and battery cell production. The latter is not explicitly excluded, but neither is it announced.
However, the rumors about the location were also wrong. For a long time, the city of Mesa in the state of Arizona was a favorite, and Fort Worth, Texas, has also tried to build the Rivian plant.
The company now wants to invest up to five billion dollars (around 4.4 billion euros) in the project in Georgia – not only in buildings and production facilities, but also in site development. In doing so, environmental compatibility, our own generation of renewable energies and green spaces should also play a role. According to Rivian, the 2,000 hectare property should also include “plenty of natural space”.
The notification does not state whether and to what extent the company receives subsidies and tax breaks. In addition to logistics, the reasons for choosing the location were also the availability of clean energy and potential employees – Rivian wants to employ up to 7,500 people on site.
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“We’re excited to have Georgia residents bring their creativity and ideas to Rivian,” said Helen Russell, Rivian’s chief people officer. “We are confident that Georgia, along with Illinois, is the place for Rivian to continue to grow and prosper.” According to Russell, the facility will manufacture “our next generation of products.” The manager did not specify which these are – as reported, the company had already secured some naming rights.
In the announcement, Rivian also announces an expansion for the currently only plant in Normal, Illinois. Approval has been received for a 623,000 square foot expansion, bringing the total area to over four million square feet. That would be an expansion of almost 58,000 square meters to just over 370,000 square meters. The additional space is to be used for storage and production capacities.
Rivian also confirms the expansion in Illinois in its shareholder report published for the first time after the IPO: The production capacity of the first plant is to be increased from 150,000 to 200,000 vehicles annually. As is well known, the first vehicles of the R1T have been delivered. There are probably 71,000 pre-orders in total, but Rivian is only talking about the R1 – the R1T electric pickup and the R1S electric SUV are not broken down further.
Rivian does not comment on his planned European plant in the communication for the second US plant. In the running are a location in Great Britain south of Bristol and the Netherlands, where Rivian could take over the existing VDL Nedcar plant. At the moment it seems as if the Netherlands are ahead: the US startup Canoo, which had already placed a contract production at VDL Nedcar, announced this week that it would not have its lifestyle vehicle built there. At the beginning of the month, Canoo announced to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that “due to the developments at VDL Nedcar, it is currently not assumed that a final framework agreement or agreement for contract manufacturing will be concluded with VDL Nedcar”.
rivian.com (communication on the work), rivian.com (shareholder report as PDF)
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