ATLANTA—Rivian Automotive, an electric vehicle manufacturer, will spend $5 billion to build its second assembly plant in Georgia.
Located east of Atlanta in Morgan and Walton counties, the new factory will have the capacity to assemble up to 400,000 vehicles a year. The plant is expected to eventually employ 7,500 people. The company also said it would expand its Illinois assembly plant to produce up to 200,000 vehicles a year, up from its capacity of 150,000 now. The expansion is supposed to add 800 to 1,000 jobs next year.
“We plan to break ground this summer, with the goal of having this facility producing salable vehicles by 2024,” says R.J. Scaringe, Rivian’s CEO.
The company currently makes vehicles at a former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, IL. That factory has produced fewer than a thousand vehicles, but Rivian says it has orders for some 71,000 pickups and sport-utility vehicles through Dec. 15. That number does not include 100,000 delivery vans Rivian says it plans to build for Amazon, one of its biggest investors.
Rivian said Dec. 16 that it will fall short of its target of making 1,200 vehicles this year by a “few hundred vehicles.”
