The new layoffs will affect around 1% of Rivian's workforce as the company works to resize itself to align with its business priorities, according to an email from Kellie Felker, Rivian's corporate communication senior manager.
"As a follow-up to some of the changes we made to teams in February, (Wednesday) we shared some additional changes to groups supporting the business," Felker said in the email. "This was a difficult decision, but a necessary one to support our goal to be gross margin positive by the end of the year."
The company will move to two shifts April 28, after the plant's planned three-week shutdown. At that time, the company will have only a day shift and a night shift, eliminating the second shift that ran from the afternoon into the evening.
The news also comes after the electric automaker's March 7 reveal of its new R2, R3 and R3X crossover models.
The R2 SUV is estimated to release in early 2026 and have over 300 miles of range, reaching speeds of 60 mph in under 3 seconds. The starting price point is $45,000. The company said 68,000 reservations for the R2 SUV were placed in the first 24 hours.
The company had previously planned to build the R2 model at a $5 billion site in Georgia that is under construction, but during the unveiling, the company said production would be pivoted to Normal.
CEO R.J. Scaringe said during the reveal that the Georgia site "remains really important" to the company's future.
"But being able to leverage the team, the skill, the passion we have in our Illinois facility to get that into the market, to get customers (their vehicles) as quickly as possible — we are just ecstatic about that," he said.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Rivian reported a loss of $1.5 billion, compared to a loss of about $1.7 billion during the same period in 2022.
The Irvine, California-based company produced 57,232 vehicles last year and delivered 50,122 vehicles to customers, more than doubling its numbers from 2022.
Photos: Rivian Automotive
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Contact Mateusz Janik at (309) 820-3234. Follow Mateusz on Twitter:@mjanik99