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.
Rivian reported 10,365 deliveries and 10,236 vehicles produced in Q1 2026, with the company reaffirming its full-year guidance of 62,000 to 67,000 deliveries. No surprises, no misses, just a steady quarter heading into what should be a pivotal year for the brand.
Rivian just landed on Fortune's "America's Most Innovative Companies" list for 2026, and it's the first time they've ever made it. What got them there is the stuff they've been heads-down on for the past year: the zonal electronics architecture, deeper hardware and software integration, and early work on a self-driving AI model. Not the flashy stuff, the actual engineering work.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe sat down with Yahoo Finance for an exclusive interview breaking down the $1.25 billion Uber robotaxi deal and why autonomous software, not just vehicles, is the real business Rivian is building toward.
Rivian and Uber are teaming up to deploy a fleet of fully autonomous R2 robotaxis, and the scale of this deal is hard to overstate. Uber is committing up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, with an initial $300 million locked in right after signing, and nobody saw this coming.
Washington state passed Senate Bill 6354, giving Rivian and Lucid the ability to sell vehicles directly to customers for the first time. The bill is expected to be signed by Governor Ferguson, ending the workaround era and opening the door for full showroom experiences within months.
Rivian is back as the headline sponsor of SXSW 2026, and this year it's all about R2. From off-road passenger rides to panels with RJ Scaringe and Kara Swisher, here's everything happening at the Electric Roadhouse in Austin from March 13 through 18.
