Rivian Will Invest Another $120 Million In Illinois Manufacturing
Upstart EV automaker Rivian, which assembles its vehicles on the site of a former Mitsubish Motors factory in Normal, Illinois, just announced another round of investments into the area. The factory that produces the R1S three-row SUV and the R1T pickup truck will soon neighbor a nearly $120 million supplier park, which should reduce construction costs and ease logistics for both Rivian and its partners. Better still, construction on the facility is already underway, and it should open sometime in 2026.
More Light Manufacturing Is On The Way To Normal
According to Rivian, the supplier park will house a key subset of the automaker’s suppliers, who will perform light assembly and manufacturing on vehicle components at the 1.2-million-square-foot building. Rivian employees will also work at the facility, sequencing the parts and preparing them for shipment to the main factory. In total, Rivian expects the supplier park to employ “several hundred” suppliers and nearly 100 in-house employees. The company is also constructing an underground tunnel between the two buildings, helping ease traffic concerns for folks in Normal who regularly commute on those roads.
“We are excited to see this supplier park coming together so quickly. This will be a key enabler to increasing production at the plant in 2026 when we start to build R2 in addition to R1 and our commercial vans.”
–RJ Scaringe, Rivian CEO and Founder
Rivian will receive an undisclosed number of incentives and tax credits to build the facility. The town of Normal, for example, will provide road improvements around the factory complex, and it will also ease the cost of running new utilities with future tax reimbursements – presumably once the facility is open for business. Furthermore, Rivian says the state of Illinois has provided “comprehensive” incentives to help offset construction and startup costs, as well as tax credits once the facility starts creating good-paying jobs in the state.
Rivian Is Getting Ready For The Future
The supplier park is expected to come online about the same time that Rivian begins production of the forthcoming R2 entry-level SUV. The two-row EV is being built at its own extension of the Normal plant, a 1.1-million-square-foot expansion that’ll be necessary to provide production volume for the smaller, cheaper Riv. The R2 is expected to have a starting price of about $45,000, giving the automaker a solid competitor to the incredibly popular Tesla Model Y, which was the world’s best-selling vehicle last year. The charming R3 tall hatch will show up some time later with an even lower price, helping Rivian target first-time EV shoppers.
Rivian is also building a manufacturing campus in Georgia in two phases. The first should be done in 2028 and will allow the company to build 200,000 EVs annually, while the second phase – due in 2030, will double that number. The factory in Georgia is key to Rivian’s success as a global automaker; at the moment, the vast majority of the company’s sales happen within the United States. The company will also use its Georgia and Illinois facilities to expand production of the simply named Commercial Van, which is most famous for its use as an Amazon Electric Delivery Van. The seemingly disparate Rivian product lineup is all part of the company’s tactic of targeting industries where EVs make the most sense.
Source: Rivian
