Last August, the U.S. automaker Rivian started limiting the production of its R1T pickup with an average of about 50 units a week until the end of the year. That rate has fluctuated, with the number dropping significantly lower at points last month amid Covid-19 outbreaks at the plant and supply-chain bottlenecks, the people said to Bloomberg.
The company is expected to soon be delivering as many as 200 electric R1T pickup trucks per week – quadrupling its production rate from where it was some weeks ago, and putting it on track to surpass 10,000 pickups manufactured this year.
According to Bloomberg, the pickup maker backed by Amazon.com Inc. had paused production at its Normal, Illinois, plant for about a week around the start of this month for fixes and process improvements. While some salable R1S units have been built, the company still has some pre-production work to complete on the SUV, the people said. Rivian also had to manage through Covid-19 outbreaks in the plant, the people said.
Rivian’s shares went up as much as 14% on Wednesday in New York, the biggest intraday gain since the first days of trading. The stock was up 9.7% to $65.37 a share at 12:45 PM EST.
Rivian share price is currently being traded at All-Time-Low levels around $54.90, as of 12:42 PM EST. The decline represents a drop of 70% from the highest share price at $179.47 last November during the first weeks of trading.
Rivian has more than 71,000 “pre-orders” (meaning refundable reservations) for its R1T pickup trucks, according to its letter to shareholders posted in December.
On Dec. 3, U.K. offered Rivian more than 1 billion $1.32 billion to build a plant in Somerset. The 635-acre site could be used for battery production, car assembly or both if the plans are approved, according to The Financial Times report.
Rivian is expanding the capacity of its Illinois factory from 150,000 vehicles to 200,000 vehicles a year. A second factory in Georgia, with a capacity of 400,000 units a year was announced with the production in this facility starting in 2024.