First R1S electric SUV deliveries aim to keep Rivian's December release promise

After launching the biggest IPO since Facebook, Rivian's stock took a nosedive this week, trading below its IPO price for the first time after the electric truck maker issued a delivery warning. Despite its modest 2021 production goal of just 1,200 vehicles to be delivered by the end of the year, Rivian said that supply chain problems may see it "a few hundred vehicles short" of its planned EV production. The stock subsequently paired some of the losses, as Rivian went and announced it has delivered the first R1S electric SUV models.

Investors shouldn't get all too excited about these early Rivian delivery news, however, as the two EVs were delivered to Rivian's CEO and CFO, and no entry has appeared on the actual revenue side of the ledger. In the tweet announcing its R1S release, Rivian advised that it expects the electric SUV to enter mass production in 2022. In its first quarterly report since the IPO, however, the R1T electric car maker's CEO Scaringe warned that supply chain issues will see it fall short of production estimates for both the R1T whose first deliveries were in September, as well as the R1S:

As of December 15, 2021, we have produced 652 R1 vehicles and delivered 386 of those, including the production and sale of our first two R1S vehicles earlier this week.

Ramping up a production system like this, as I said before, is a really complex orchestra. We’re ramping largely as expected, the battery constraint is really an artifact of just bringing up a highly automated line, and, as I said, it doesn’t present any long-term challenges for us.

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