Despite Rivian being embroiled in legal battles work at their Georgia plant site on I-20 one hour east of Atlanta continues according to The Center Square. The work is going on after the fact that on September 29th Ocmulgee Superior Court Judge Brenda Trammell denied the bond validation for the project.
The ruling also invalidated the rental agreement with the state leaving Rivian on the hook to pay traditional property taxes, negating hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for the California-based EV automaker.
On Friday the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) and the Joint Development Authority (JDA) of Jasper, Morgan, Newton, and Walton Counties filed an appeal of Trammell’s decision to deny the bond validation and rental agreement.
Center Square wrote, “”The judge’s ruling improperly considered and drew conclusions regarding Rivian’s finances,” the GDEcD and the JDA said in a statement. “What’s more, the decision disregarded Rivian’s significant cash reserves and manufacturing performance at the company’s existing facility in Normal, Illinois, and the rising market trend toward electric vehicles.”
While many McLean County residents might wish Rivian would have built their Georgia plant here, cheering against the success of the Georgia plant probably isn’t wise. Should Rivian suffer huge losses in Georgia, it most certainly could impact the companies ability to succeed and endanger jobs at the Normal plant.
Rivian is also reacting to a vehicle recall of almost all 13,000 vehicles the plant first produced and the resulting impact on the value of their stock.
On Friday October 7th Rivian announced it would recall most of its vehicles due to a possible loose fastener that could result in the loss of steering. The concern was that a nut may not have been screwed on tight in some vehicles.
Rivain shares fell sharply on Monday the 10th after the Friday recall announcement. The stock closed that day down 7%. While recalls are common, the potential consequences of a fastener coming loose concerned investors. With the company under a spotlight quality issues are problematic. Recalls are bad optics. Rivian’s shares have fallen almost 70% since the beginning of the year.
By October 19th Rivian had fixed the majority of the recalled vehicles.
Rivian: Layoffs, R1T Towing Issues, Fires and Amazon Van Deliveries
Even the good news regarding Rivian isn’t without its bumbling and stumbling.
Connect Transit opened its Sapphire route serving Rivian and the W, Market St. Walmart on October 9th. Originally planned to be called the Cobalt route that name was ditched to avoid the negative connection to cobalt mining that was especially unnecessary to bring up given Rivian prides itself on not using cobalt in its batteries.
The route runs on 30 minute headways at peak hours from downtown Bloomington to the west Bloomington Walmart then to Rivian and on to Uptown Normal. At Uptown Station the route reverses itself back to downtown Bloomington.
Coincidentally the new route opened shortly after Connect Transit announced it was reducing the frequency of some routes because of a driver shortage.
And despite having to recall almost all of its vehicles later, Rivian did successfully announce on October 3rd that its production increased for the quarter ending September 30, 2022. The company produced 7,363 vehicles and delivered 6,584 vehicles during that period. Rivian believes it is on track to produce 25,000 vehicles by years end.
