Rivian raises EV sales forecast as Q2 production ramps up

Rivian is telling investors that it might see a better sales year than it expected, despite the many headwinds working against electric vehicles in the U.S. right now. Rivian previously said it would ship between 62,000 and 67,000 vehicles this year, but the company now expects to deliver between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles, the company said on Thursday. It’s a small but potentially meaningful bump for the company, which only shipped 42,247 electric vehicles last year. The new forecast comes as EV sales growth has cooled off in the U.S., driven in part by Congress killing the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, and President Trump’s administration axing environmental regulations that encouraged the production and purchase of electric vehicles. The new forecast could be a sign that the company's high expectations for its brand new mass-market EV, the R2 SUV, are justified. Rivian didn’t offer a specific reason for this newfound confidence, only saying it outperformed its own expectations in the second quarter thanks to “robust growth quarter-over-quarter in EDV and R1, coupled with the introduction of R2 deliveries.” (EDV is the name Rivian uses for its electric commercial van.) Rivian said on Thursday that it built 12,613 vehicles last quarter and delivered 12,194. It had only expected to ship between 9,000 and 11,000. Rivian has high hopes for the new R2 SUV, which it starting selling last month , starting at around $58,000. The company has expanded its factory in Normal, Illinois, to produce them, and is also building an entirely new production facility in Georgia as it works to manufacture hundreds of thousands of R2s per year. Rivian hasn’t explicitly said how many R2s it expects to sell this year, but the company's chief financial officer Claire McDonough has mentioned a range of 20,000 to 25,000 units. It’s unclear if that number has now increased along with the new forecast bump, or if the company expects the exc...