Rivian reports $1.7 billion in losses over Q3

US American electric car startup Rivian has reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2022. The company generated revenue of $536 million and posted a net loss of $1.72 billion in the reporting period.

That translates to revenue of 515 million euros and a net loss of 1.65 billion euros. The loss was thus almost half a billion dollars higher than in the prior-year quarter ($1.23 billion/1.18 billion euros) and pretty much on a par with the second quarter of 2022.

Produced Rivian from July to September as previously reported 7,363 vehicles and could deliver 6,584. This represents a 67 percent increase in Rivian’s production compared to Q2. The company is sticking to its goal of producing 25,000 vehicles for the full year. To meet the goal, at least in terms of production, Rivian would need to build 10,683 more vehicles by the end of December – and set a new record quarter.

With a new piece of information from the investor letter, that seems possible: to boost production numbers, Rivian recently added a second shift at its Illinois plant – primarily for the R1. The second shift, he said, is already contributing to overall volume but must go through similar steps in training and optimizing operations as the established first shift.

Pre-orders for the Rivian R1 in the US and Canada totalled more than 114,000 as of Nov. 7. “As we navigate through these uncertain economic times, we are encouraged by the strong demand for our products as evidenced by our robust preorder backlog,” the document states.

During the third quarter, Rivian was able to take another important step that has nothing to do with production itself, but does have to do with the company’s spending. Since July, finished vehicles have been transported away by rail rather than truck, resulting in cost savings in logistics.

Higher production is also expected to contribute to the improved cost structure. “As we produce vehicles at low volumes on production lines designed for higher volumes, we have and will continue to experience negative gross profit related to labour, depreciation, and overhead costs,” the annual report states. “This dynamic will continue in the near term and is impacted by the ongoing ramp of our second shift of production, but as we have already started to experience, we expect it will improve on a per-vehicle basis as production volumes ramp up faster than future labor and overhead costs increase.”

rivian.com (letter to investors as PDF)