Electric car maker Rivian announced on Wednesday that it’s laying off 10 percent of its salaried workforce to cut costs after facing a quarterly loss. The Amazon-backed company reported that it lost $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023 and said that it expects to build 57,000 electric vehicles in 2024, the same number it built last year.
“Our business is facing a challenging macroeconomic environment — including historically high interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty — and we need to make purposeful changes now to ensure our promising future,” Rivian’s founder and CEO wrote to employees in an email, CNN reported. “We must strategically prioritize our growth areas of the business, including the launch of Peregrine and R2 as well as investing in our go-to-market capabilities.”
As part of its plans to cut costs, Rivian will shut down a factory in Illinois in the middle of this year and will upgrade its manufacturing line to boost production rates by 30 precent.The company is expected to unveil the R2, a compact SUV in the $40,000 to $60,000 range, on March 7, although deliveries of the vehicle won’t start until 2026.