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According to foreign media reports, Rivian Automotive, a new power brand in the United States, has announced that it will cut its workforce by 6%. The electric car maker hopes to increase production while reducing costs in the increasingly competitive electric vehicle market. It is understood that Rivian currently has about 14000 employees, which means the company will lay off about 840 people, but Rivian did not give an exact time for the layoffs, saying only that the affected employees would receive an email.

R.J.Scaringe, CEO of Rivian, said, "to achieve our long-term goals, resources must be focused on improving and profitability, while ensuring that we have the right products, services and technologies for the future to continue to challenge traditions. Continuing to improve operational efficiency on the road to profitability is the core goal, focusing investment and resources on the most influential parts of the business. " As a result, R.J.Scaringe apologized for the layoffs.

In addition to making profits as soon as possible, layoffs are also referred to as a strategy to deal with declining cash reserves and weak economic development, as well as price cuts by Tesla and Ford to better prepare for a price war in the North American electric vehicle market. In mid-January, following price cuts in China and Japan, Tesla cut the price of the Model Ymax 3 model sold in the US market by 6% to 20%, and some models after the price reduction are already eligible for the new US federal tax relief. After Tesla announced the price reduction, Ford couldn't sit still. On February 1st, Ford announced a price cut of $1000 to $5900 for its Mustang Mach-E in the United States. Admittedly, the price reduction of Tesla and Ford will effectively drive sales growth, and some models can enjoy the new US federal tax relief.

Unlike Tesla and Ford, both companies can gain market share by sacrificing profits, while Rivian is still losing money, has weak cash reserves and is forced to lay off staff. Of course, the current economic situation in the United States is not ideal for bulk consumer goods such as cars. The demand for cars in the US market is weakening, and supply chain problems such as the rise in the price of power batteries caused by skyrocketing prices of raw materials have made electric car manufacturers miserable. It is not clear how much effect it will play after layoffs.

Data show that Rivian was founded in 2009, headquartered in Irvine, California, was originally an American Mainstream Motors car manufacturer specializing in the development of sports cars, in 2010, the founder renamed Mainstream Motors to Rivian, and transferred from sports cars to pure electric pickups.

At the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show, Rivian launched pure electric pickup truck R1T and pure electric SUV R1S, among which pure electric pickup truck R1T is widely preferred. In the American market, pickups are much more popular than cars and SUV. Take 2022 as an example, the top three car sales in the United States are Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Solod and Dodge RAM, respectively. All three models are pickups, with sales of 654000, 523000 and 468000 respectively. At the same time, under the wave of new energy vehicles, electric pick-up trucks have also become the tipping point of the American car market, such as GM's GMC Hummer EV, Ford's Fmur150 Lightning, Tesla's Cybertruck and so on. From this point of view, it seems that Rivian took the lead in launching the pure electric pickup truck R1T to comply with the development of the market, which is the main reason why it was invested by Ford and Amazon.

On November 1, 2021, Rivian was listed on NASDAQ with an offering price of $78. It rose to $119.46 in intraday trading and closed at $100.73, with a total market capitalization of $85.9 billion. On the same day, founder RJ Scaringe revealed in an interview that Rivian must grow rapidly to produce at least 1 million electric vehicles a year by 2030. Rivian's long-term plan is to build four assembly plants around the world, with a second plant in the United States in addition to the existing one in Normal, Illinois, and one in Europe and one in China.

Since then, Rivian's share price has soared, from $100.73 on November 1 to $172.01 on November 16, with its market capitalization rising from $85.9 billion on November 1 to $149.4 billion on November 16. As of November 16, Rivian's market capitalization is second only to Tesla's US $1.0592 trillion and Toyota's US $261.8 billion, surpassing Volkswagen and BMW to become the third car company in the world by market capitalization. Tesla CEO Musk said publicly after the listing of Rivian that "achieving a break-even between mass production and cash flow is the real test of Rivian, a start-up electric car company", which sounded sour at the time, but it didn't come true. Rivian shares have plummeted since Nov. 16, falling to $19.90 a share in the last session, while Ford had no choice but to sell its shares and leave at a loss as results and prospects came under pressure.

Ford sold 8 million shares in electric car maker Rivian for $214 million, while Ford still owns 93.9 million shares in Rivian, according to regulatory filings. Ford's reason for selling Rivian shares is simple, because it's too bad to hold it. Ford reported a net loss of $1.981 billion in 2022, a sharp drop from a profit of $17.937 billion in 2021. Ford said the sharp drop in profits in 2022 was due to a $7.4 billion impairment in the market value of its investment in Rivian and a $2.7 billion impairment in Argo AI, a self-driving car start-up, coupled with rising costs and lower-than-planned production caused by unstable production.

Constant layoffs, executive turnover and losses in car sales have doomed Rivian's life to be difficult. According to data released by Rivian, a total of 24337 new cars were produced and 20332 new cars were delivered in 2022. Even though Rivian had planned to produce 50, 000 cars in 2022 and then cut them to 25000, it failed to meet its target.

At the same time, Rivian's losses are also increasing. According to the financial report released by Rivian, Rivian had revenues of $536 million and a net loss of $1.72 billion in the third quarter of 2022. During the reporting period, Rivian produced 7363 vehicles and delivered 6584 vehicles. In other words, Rivian loses $230000 for every car it produces.

In an effort to further save cash, Rivian announced at the end of 2022 that it would suspend plans for a joint venture with Mercedes-Benz (Mercedes-Benz Vans). Earlier, Mercedes-Benz Commercial vehicle (Mercedes-Benz Vans) and Rivian announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding to launch a strategic partnership. According to the announcement, the two sides will set up a joint venture to produce electric trucks in Europe in the future. The two companies hope to make use of shared investment, cost sharing and operational synergies to rapidly expand the production scale of electric trucks. It is understood that the two sides are considering investing in an existing Mercedes-Benz plant in Central or Eastern Europe to build a new pure electric production facility.

At the end of the third quarter, Rivian held $13.272 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

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