Rivian announces second US plant, big quarterly loss

Electric truck maker Rivian said on Thursday it will invest $5 billion to build its second US assembly plant in the state of Georgia.

It also announced a sharp quarterly loss and acknowledged it may be "a few hundred vehicles short" of its target to produce 1,200 cars this year, according to an earnings release.

The second plant after the automaker's Normal, Illinois factory will be located east of Atlanta and employ more than 7,500 people, Rivian said in a release.

Construction will start next summer with a targeted opening of 2024 for the facility that can produce up to 400,000 vehicles per-year.

"We're happy to partner with Georgia on our new manufacturing site, which will build our next generation of products that are important for scaling our business," the company's Chief People Officer Helen Russell said.

The company also announced third quarter results, with a net loss of more than $1.2 billion.

Rivian has been a favorite of Wall Street since its arrival on indices last month, despite producing only a fraction of the cars of traditional Detroit firms like Ford and General Motors. It overtook those companies in valuation on its first day of trading.

The electric carmaker cited supply chain issues common to the auto industry during the pandemic for the shortfall it expects in production this year, and said the issues "are not systemic in nature."

"We have been met with one of the most complex supply chain environments the automotive industry has ever experienced," the company said in its earnings announcement.

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