Electric pickup truck company Rivian raises $1.3 billion
Rivian, the company making electric vehicles for Amazon and Ford, just got a big influx of cash.
The Michigan-based carmaker has raised $1.3 billion in a new funding round led by investment firm and Tesla shareholder T. Rowe Price, Rivian announced Monday. Amazon and Ford also took part in the funding round, the company said.
The latest investment is Rivian’s fourth of 2019 and brings its fundraising for the year to nearly $3 billion.
“This investment demonstrates confidence in our team, products, technology and strategy — we are extremely excited to have the support from such strong shareholders,” Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement.
Aside from developing its own vehicles — the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV — the company is also helping Ford develop a new plug-in battery vehicle and is making 100,000 electric delivery vans for Amazon.
Seen as the biggest competitor to Tesla’s new Cybertruck, Rivian claims its electric pickup can travel more than 400 miles on a single charge, carry nearly 1,800 pounds of payload and can tow another 11,000 pounds. The most expensive version of the Cybertruck can carry 3,500 pounds and tow 14,000 pounds, while traveling 500 miles on a single charge. The base model will have a range of 250 miles.
Ford, meanwhile, is also developing an electric version of its own classic pickup, the F-150, which it says it expects to roll out “in a few years.”
The company has started taking pre-orders for both its launch vehicles, which have a starting price of $69,000. Rivian will manufacture the pickup and SUV at a former Mitsubishi factory in Normal, Illinois, and plans to start delivering them to customers towards the end of next year.
