- Rivian has received conditional approval for a federal loan of $6.6 billion to fund a plant in Georgia
- The plant will have an annual capacity of 400,000 vehicles and is anticipated to start production in 2028
- The plant will initially build Rivian’s R2 and R3/R3X compact crossovers
Rivian has been granted conditional approved for a $6.6 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to fund construction of a plant in Georgia, the electric vehicle startup said on Monday.
Rivian said it must meet certain technical, legal, environmental, and financial conditions to receive the loan, which is part of the DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program.
Citing an anoymous source, Reuters reported that Rivian won’t actively resist unionization efforts at the plant as one of the loan conditions.
The plant, to be located east of Atlanta in Stanton Springs, was first announced by Rivian in 2021, at which time the company said it expected to start production at the site by 2024. However, the company has faced some hurdles in securing funding, including losing some tax breaks linked with the plant.
Rivian R3
With the approval of the loan, Rivian said it will build the plant in two phases, each resulting in 200,000 units of annual production capacity, for a total of 400,000 units annually. The first phase is expected to be ready in 2028.
The plant will initially build vehicles on Rivian’s Midsize platform, which has been confirmed for the R2 and R3/R3X compact crossovers.
Rivian’s current R1 models are built at the company’s plant in Normal, Illinois. The Normal plant is also expected to start production of the R2 around 2026. Rivian has previously said it’s planning to build 155,000 R2s annually in Normal, which by itself would be more vehicles than the company has cumulatively delivered since its first customer vehicles arrived in fall 2021.
The announcement of the loan comes less than two weeks after Volkswagen Group agreed increasing its investment in Rivian to $5.8 billion, up from $5 billion previously. The two companies also plan to establish a joint venture tasked with developing and supplying electrical architecture and software systems, with features like network hardware and software stacks that enable vehicles to be updated over the air for their full life cycle mentioned during an investor briefing.