Rivian tells investors it may see a better-than-expected sales year despite the many headwinds working against electric vehicles in the US right now.
Rivian previously said it would ship between 62,000 and 67,000 vehicles this year, but the company now expects to deliver between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles, the company he said on Thursday.
It’s a small but potentially significant blow to the company, which shipped just 42,247 electric vehicles last year. The new forecast comes as electric vehicle sales growth has slowed in the U.S., in part because of Congress killing a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles and President Trump’s administration rolling back environmental regulations that encouraged the production and purchase of electric vehicles.
The new forecast could be a sign that the company’s high expectations for its all-new mass-market EV, the R2 SUV, are being justified.
Rivian did not give a specific reason for this new confidence, saying only that it beat its own expectations in the second quarter thanks to “strong quarter-on-quarter growth in EDV and R1, coupled with the introduction of R2 deliveries.” (EDV is the name Rivian uses for its electric commercial van.)
Rivian said Thursday it built 12,613 vehicles in the last quarter and delivered 12,194. He only expected to ship between 9,000 and 11,000.
Rivian has high hopes for the new R2 SUV, which went on sale last month, starting at around $58,000. The company has expanded its factory in Normal, Illinois, to produce them and is also building an entirely new production facility in Georgia as it works to manufacture hundreds of thousands of R2s per year.
Rivian has not specifically said how many R2s it expects to sell this year, but the company’s chief financial officer Claire McDonough has indicated a range of 20,000 to 25,000 units. It’s unclear if that number has now increased with the new forecast, or if the company expects the excess deliveries to come from its commercial trucks and more expensive R1 line of trucks and SUVs.
Either way, more deliveries this year would be good news for Rivian’s bottom line, as the company is still trying to climb out of a multibillion-dollar hole. The company had said it might eventually turn a profit in 2027, but recently pushed back that goal to invest in autonomous software development, largely because it now has a deal to supply Uber with R2 self-driving SUVs.
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