Rivian started a second production shift for its R2 SUV at its plant in Normal, Illinois, before the end of September, meeting the target it set in July, the company told EV, although it never publicly announced the start.
A Rivian spokesperson said on Monday, in response to questions from EV, that the shift began in the third quarter and had not been delayed.
The company, founded and led by RJ Scaringe, had not confirmed the exact start date as of writing time.
“R2 production started with a single shift, and we expect to scale to two shifts by the end of the third quarter,” Scaringe said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on July 30.
The EV maker did not announce when that happened.
Rivian’s third-quarter production and delivery report on October 2 did not mention the shift, and the company made no announcement on its start before Monday’s response.
The day before the target date, Rivian’s Vice President of Investor Relations described the shift in terms of hiring.
“We’re now hiring and ready to have the second shift get up and running as well as we head into the fourth quarter,” Chip Newcom, VP of Investor Relations, said at an Evercore ISI forum on September 29.
Newcom said at the same forum that “it’s really the supply chain right now that is constraining production within the plant,” and described Rivian’s approach to the ramp as “crawl, walk, run.”
A Target Brought Forward
The end-of-September date was itself earlier than Rivian’s original plan.
Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough said on February 12 that Rivian would start R2 production on a single shift and “expect to add a second shift” toward the end of the year.
“We’re bringing on a second shift that will be happening near the end of the year,” Scaringe said on the same call, adding that a third shift would follow in 2027.
On April 30, McDonough said Rivian expected “to scale to two shifts by the end of 2026.”
Three months later, the company brought that forward to the end of the third quarter, a target it repeated in its second-quarter earnings presentation.
Even then, Rivian did not expect the extra shift to lift output immediately.
“We are not expecting any material contribution to volumes with the second shift in this quarter,” Chief Operating Officer Javier Varela said on July 30, “but we will see it in quarter four.”
Scaringe described the fourth quarter as “a really important element where we start to see the benefits of our second shift online.”
Timed to Parts
By September, executives were linking the shift to the pace of Rivian’s suppliers.
“Still planning to add a second shift here in the third quarter, so working through the ramp process as you would expect,” Newcom said at a Goldman Sachs conference on September 8.
“We can only move as fast as the slowest supplier in our supply chain,” he said.
He told Baird analysts around the same time that the shift remained planned for the third quarter, with three weeks of the quarter left.
A week later, at a Morgan Stanley conference on September 15, Scaringe said the plant was not the constraint on the R2’s ramp, and that the shift remained on track but had to be timed to the arrival of parts.
“Bringing a second shift on to then not be busy because you don’t have parts is also a challenge,” he said.
“Our plant is out pretty far in front of where we are from a supply base point of view,” Scaringe said, adding that “the Tier 2s and Tier 3s” could be the most challenging.
What the Numbers Show
Rivian does not report R2 production separately, so its output figures do not show when the second shift began.
The company built 19,751 vehicles in the third quarter, up 56.6% from 12,613 in the second quarter, and delivered a record 19,248, in line with its own outlook.
A recall filing with US safety regulators showed that Rivian built at least 2,481 R2s between April 23 and August 10, a minimum rather than a production total.
EV has tracked R2 vehicle identification numbers against the shift deadline since August, as assignments neared 6,000, crossed 8,300, approached 10,000 and passed 11,400 and 12,100.
Owner-reported data on the Rivian Roamer tracker point to faster assignment of R2 vehicle identification numbers in October.
The highest R2 number linked to the tracker rose from 13,0XX on September 29 to 13,6XX on October 2, and stood at 15,3XX on Monday morning.
That is approximately 170 numbers a day since October 2, against about 90 to 110 a day in late September, by EV‘s calculation.
Rivian assigns numbers before vehicles are built, and the tracker covers only owners who link their cars, so the pace is not a measure of production and cannot date the start of the second shift.
Hiring for Nights
Rivian has been recruiting for R2 night-shift roles since at least June.
A posting for a Group Leader for R2 body production on the night shift, listed on the Illinois state jobs portal on July 16, gave hours of 6 p.m. to 3 a.m.
An R2 group leader at the plant had written in April that he looked forward to ramping production on the night shift, EV reported at the time.
The postings show Rivian staffing a second shift, not when it began operating.
Local media in Bloomington-Normal reported the end-of-September target in July but said it was unclear how many workers, if any, Rivian would need to hire for it.
What Rides on It
Rivian reaffirmed its 2026 delivery guidance of 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles on October 2.
Reaching the low end requires 23,193 deliveries in the fourth quarter, by EV’s calculation, above the record set in the third.
Baird kept an Outperform rating on the stock on October 5, saying deliveries had beaten estimates as R2 deliveries ramped.
Rivian has said the Normal plant can build up to 215,000 vehicles a year, including up to 155,000 R2s, and McDonough has described a long-term target of 4,000 vehicles a week there.
The plant has changed shift patterns before.
Rivian added a second R1 shift in the fall of 2022 and a third in June 2023, before returning to two shifts in April 2024, when a spokesperson said: “With our continued improvements in efficiency, we can meet that (57,000) goal on two shifts.”
Rivian will report third-quarter results on October 29.
