The North American manufacturer of electric SUVs did not reach its production goal for the past 2022. In this way, Rivian says goodbye to a very turbulent year for the company.
2022 has been a year of bad news for Rivian. The North American brand started with enormous growth expectations, which have been decreasing month by month. One of the main objectives that they initially intended to meet was to reach a production of 50,000 electric cars. At the end of the year, the company has not even reached half of the said goal.
Likewise, although Rivian started the year with a high production proposal, as the year wore on expectations decreased to the point of lowering the target to 25,000 units, which they have not reached either. The number of units produced in 2022 stood at 24,337 electric models, between the Rivian R1T, Rivian R1S, and the EDV delivery for Amazon.
Dividing its figures by quarter, the year ended with a total of 2,553 units manufactured in the first quarter, 4,401 in the second, 7,363 in the third, and 10,020 vehicles in the fourth and last quarter. The increase in production is very positive since in each period their figures have increased. However, this evolution has not been enough to achieve objectives.
Rivian has suffered many ups and downs in 2022. The ravages of the supply crisis caused the company to have to stop its production for a total of 70 days due to a lack of components. In recent months, they have also suffered from the effects of the local weather, forcing them to close the factory for five more days due to flooding.
Despite everything, its CEO, RJ Scaringe, shows a positive attitude. He is convinced that, had they not suffered from a lack of components, they would have easily reached 25,000 cars produced. For months, the manager has strongly criticized suppliers of chips and other elements for showing favoritism towards other older car brands.
According to Scaringe, however, the brand has exceeded the figure of 25,000 cars produced, specifically, there have been 25,051, but the last 714 will not be counted for measurements and statistics because they were not completed due to a lack of final steps: validation of software and wheel alignment.
The brand does not give specific figures per model, but of the total produced in 2022 (24,337 units), 20,332 were delivered to their customers. Of that total, 8,054 correspond to the fourth quarter. Currently, they have a reserve book of more than 114,000 orders for the Rivian R1T and R1S, plus a backlog of nearly 100,000 electric EDV vans for Amazon.
The forecasts are not entirely flattering for Rivian, since if vehicle production does not increase significantly, they could face a bottleneck that is difficult to bear for the brand.
Its stock market figures are not the best either. Rivian reached more than 100,000 million dollars of capitalization after its Initial Public Offering. The last valuation of it placed it below 15,000 million dollars and 17.34 dollars per share. However, this was before the announcement of the production figures obtained in 2022, which could mean an even more significant drop.
