Rivian has now put out an official statement confirming that an EF-1 tornado touched down at the Normal Plant Friday night, damaging Building 2 which houses R2 assembly. No injuries, and the company expects to resume operations in that building this week. Operations elsewhere on the campus continue as normal.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Severe weather through Central Illinois last night reached Rivian's Normal plant, with early photos showing a section of roof caved in on Building 2, the newer addition tied to R2 assembly. The extent of the damage isn't clear yet, and we're holding off on speculation until Rivian or the town puts out something official.

Rivian and Redwood Materials are deploying a 10 megawatt-hour battery energy storage system at the Normal, Illinois plant, powered by more than 100 second-life Rivian battery packs. It's the largest repurposed battery energy storage system at any U.S. auto manufacturer, and it's designed to cut energy costs by reducing how much grid power the factory needs during peak demand.

Rivian is building a massive new 40,000 square foot showroom, service center, and charging hub right off I-4 across from the Millenia Mall in Orlando. I stopped by the site today and construction hasn't gone vertical yet, but once it does this thing is going to move fast.

Rivian dropped its Q1 2026 numbers and the headline is simple: 10,365 deliveries, 20% more than this time last year. In a quarter where basically every automaker is down, that's a genuinely good result. But the more fun story is what happened to Ford. Their EV sales cratered 70%, falling from 22,550 units a year ago to just 6,860, and suddenly Rivian is outselling them in electric vehicles. That's not a sentence I expected to write in 2026.