Rivian, an electric vehicle start-up that aims to compete with Tesla, on Wednesday reported another substantial quarterly loss as it worked to increase production.
The company said it lost $1.7 billion in the three months that ended in September, compared with a loss of $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier. Rivian has lost $5 billion in the first nine months of the year.
Rivian, which began producing vehicles in October 2021, reported revenue of $536 million in the third quarter and produced 7,363 vehicles. That compares with revenue of $364 million and 4,400 vehicles in the second quarter.
The company used $1.7 billion in cash in the third quarter and ended the quarter with $13.8 billion in cash, giving it enough money, Rivian said, to fund its operations through 2025.
The company’s big challenge now is increasing production enough to meet demand for its vehicles, cover the cost of making those vehicles and, eventually, turning a profit. It also has to deal with a persistent global shortage of computer chips, batteries and other parts that has hampered all automakers.
In a statement, the company said it had recently added a second shift to its plant in Normal, Ill., and confirmed that it would meet its target of producing about 25,000 vehicles this year. Rivian said it had reservations for 114,000 vehicles as of Monday, up from 90,000 in early May.
“The ramp curve has been much faster than on the first shift. We’re going through that ramp now,” Rivian chief executive, R.J. Scaringe, said on Wednesday in a conference call to discuss the third-quarter results. “We are very much focused on ramping the second shift and going into 2023 strong.”
He said the company’s supply chain problems have eased enough that it now expects “healthy growth” from quarter to quarter next year.
Shares of the company stock were up about 6 percent in extended trading on Wednesday. The stock has tumbled from a high of more than $170 shortly after its initial public offering in November 2021 to around $30 a share.
Rivian makes electric pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, and is making electric delivery vans for Amazon, one of its biggest shareholders.
In September, Rivian and Mercedes-Benz began discussing possible ways to work together to produce electric delivery vans for the European market.
Sumber: www.nytimes.com
