{"id":83741,"date":"2025-09-16T13:08:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T17:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=83741"},"modified":"2025-09-16T13:08:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T17:08:19","slug":"rivian-breaks-ground-on-the-georgia-factory-where-it-plans-to-build-r2-and-r3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=83741","title":{"rendered":"Rivian breaks ground on the Georgia factory where it plans to build R2 and R3"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rivian broke ground<\/a> on its long-planned Georgia factory today, with the goal of getting cars off the line in 2028. The company plans to build its highly anticipated R2 and R3 vehicles there, though it will start initial production of the R2 in its existing Illinois plant in the interim.<\/p>\n

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Rivian first announced the plan for the factory in 2021<\/a>, at a cost of $5 billion. It was originally planned to be the home of Rivian\u2019s next-generation vehicle, the $45,000 R2<\/a>, which will be a competitor for the mid-size SUVs that currently dominate the American automotive landscape<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The plant will be built in a rural area outside Social Circle, Georgia, about an hour East of Atlanta. Rivian has also announced an East Coast Headquarters in Atlanta<\/a>, which will support the new plant.<\/p>\n

The factory was originally supposed to open in 2024, but has been significantly delayed. Most recently, Rivian decided to pull forward production of the R2 and move it to the company\u2019s existing factory in Normal, Illinois, saving over $2 billion in short-term costs<\/a>. It made this announcement alongside the unveiling of the R2 and R3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But Rivian still has targets to meet, and those targets were imposed by entities with rather deep pockets. As is the case with many economic development projects, the company has grants from the state of Georgia and loans from the federal government, each of which have timetables attached.<\/p>\n

State and local officials offered a total of $1.5 billion in support to Rivian for the factory, and the federal government offered the company a loan of up to $6.6 billion<\/a>, which closed in the final days of President Biden\u2019s administration<\/a> (before anti-EV forces<\/a> invaded the Oval Office and started on their mission to destroy American industry<\/a>). But the feds\u2019 loan requires breaking ground, which Rivian fulfilled today.<\/p>\n

The plan now is for the factory to start producing cars in 2028. The factory will be built in two phases, each with 200,000 units of capacity, with the plans to use that capacity to expand sales outside of North America.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s groundbreaking represents a big win for Georgia, which has attracted significant amounts of investment in EV-related manufacturing as a result of President Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act.<\/p>\n

Since Biden\u2019s EV push, Georgia alone has seen 22 facilities announced, representing $24.4 billion in investment and 26,400 EV jobs, per the BlueGreen Alliance\u2019s EV Jobs tool<\/a>. This is despite Georgia Governor Brian Kemp being a climate change skeptic<\/a>\u2026 but at least he still wants the state to have good EV jobs, and attended today\u2019s groundbreaking. Georgia\u2019s two Democratic Senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have both provided significant support in bringing these EV jobs to the state.<\/p>\n

Rivian\u2019s project was the largest of these announced facilities at the time of its announcement, with 7,500 planned jobs. But since then, Hyundai\u2019s upcoming Georgia factory and its 10,000+ planned jobs exceeded it in size. The two factories, combined, make up the majority of planned EV jobs for the state of Georgia.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s still a strange time for EVs in the US. Not only are the federal EV tax credit and other EV manufacturing incentives ending<\/a> (even though the far higher subsidy received by gas cars remains<\/a>), some of Georgia\u2019s other<\/em> EV investment has recently been thrown into question.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump, the current squatter in the Oval Office (who is Constitutionally barred from holding office in the US<\/a>), made another step towards his goal of harming American manufacturing last week, when his administration sent its thugs to raid Hyundai\u2019s massive plant in Georgia<\/a>. This has resulted in nationwide backlash in Korea<\/a> and delayed the plant\u2019s construction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rivian has not suffered a similar fate, but there could be unanticipated future roadblocks along the way, depending on how committed the current occupier of the White House is to destroying American industry.<\/p>\n

But for Rivian\u2019s part, it says that EV credits aren\u2019t required to make its plans for the factory pencil out. Alex Hoffman, its Chief Policy Officer, said \u201cwe did not build this company based upon federal tax incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite this, the company is still breaking ground at what could be considered a shaky time for building EV plants in the US \u2013 maybe the EV tax credit isn\u2019t necessary to make the plans pencil out, but the $8 billion in loans and support from governments seems to have made enough difference to keep plans on schedule, this time.<\/p>\n

The company hosted an event this weekend for the community<\/a>, which thousands of people attended. Rivian says the plant will start vertical construction in 2026, and vehicles will start rolling off the line in 2028.<\/p>\n

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Rivian broke ground on its long-planned Georgia factory today, with the goal of getting cars off the line in 2028. The company plans to build its highly anticipated R2 and R3 vehicles there, though it will start initial production of the R2 in its existing Illinois plant in the interim. Rivian first announced the plan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}