Elon Musk Fires At Tesla Rival Rivian: Recommend They Get First Plant Working Before Jumping On Second

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk has a piece of advice for Amazon.com Inc AMZN and Ford Motor Co F-backed electric vehicle maker Rivian - learn from your mistakes before rushing to build a second plant.

What Happened: Rivian is reportedly investing at least $5 billion to build a second electric vehicle factory near Fort Worth, Texas. The manufacturing plant, codenamed “Project Terra,” will have an annual capacity of 200,000 electric vehicles and is expected to create at least 7,500 jobs by 2027.

The development spurred Musk to comment on Rivian’s efforts to build the second plant in the U.S. with a suggestion that Rivian should get its first factory “working” as it is “insanely” difficult to produce at a large scale at affordable unit cost.

I’d recommend they get their first plant working. It’s insanely difficult to reach volume production at affordable unit cost.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2021

Musk later agreed to a response to his earlier tweet that elaborated how most problems in a manufacturing plant are found out during production and not beforehand and it is not smart to scale up without learning from those mistakes. 

See Also: Tesla's 'Ulterior Motive' In Suing Rivian Was To Malign Its Image, Threaten Employees, Rival Retorts

Why It Matters: Rivian’s recent fundraise and expansion plans come just months after the electric vehicle maker delayed the start of production of its R1T electric pickups at its existing manufacturing facility in Normal, Illinois.

The second plant will help Rivian expand capacity and compete with Elon Musk-led Tesla, which has a relatively larger scale and is further expanding — currently building an electric vehicle factory in Austin with a target to begin production by the end of the year.

Rivian recently secured a fresh $2.5 billion funding from existing investors such as Amazon, Ford and T. Rowe Price. The electric vehicle start-up said it has raised about $10.5 billion since 2019.  

The California-based startup is valued at $27.6 billion and is reportedly planning to get a U.S. listing in September. The IPO timing is not certain and the listing could occur in late 2021 or even 2022, as per a Bloomberg report.

Price Action: Amazon shares closed 0.86% lower at $3,292.11 on Wednesday.

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Photo by NVIDIA Corp on Flickr