Electric Vehicle Maker Rivian Announces More Layoffs

Rivian, the struggling electric vehicle manufacturer, has notified the Employment Development Department of California about its intention to implement further layoffs in the state.

According to a letter sent by Scott Griffin, Rivian’s vice president of people, to the department in April, the company is set to lay off more than 120 employees, with 89 located in Irvine and 28 in Palo Alto.

The Detroit News reported that the job cuts are expected to take effect in June and will be permanent in nature.

This news comes on the heels of Rivian’s announcement in February, where the company revealed plans to reduce its workforce by 10%.

The announcement had a significant impact on the company’s stock price, causing it to plummet.

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At the time of the IPO, Rivian’s valuation stood at nearly $88 billion, but as of Monday, the company’s value had decreased to approximately $11 billion.

Reuters recently reported that Rivian had around 16,790 employees across North America and Europe as of December 31, 2022.

In a statement, a Rivian spokesperson addressed the layoffs, stating, “We continue to work to right-size the business and ensure alignment to our priorities. As a follow-up to some of the changes we made to teams in February, in April we shared some additional changes to groups supporting the business. Around 1 percent of our workforce was affected by this change. This was a difficult decision, but a necessary one to support our goal to be gross margin positive by the end of the year.”

Rivian’s decision to downsize its workforce is not an isolated incident in the electric vehicle industry.

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Other prominent EV automakers, such as Tesla, Lucid, and particularly Fisker, have also been shrinking their work forces. This trend suggests that the market for high-end electric vehicles may be reaching a saturation point, with companies facing challenges in attracting the next wave of buyers beyond the affluent early adopters.