
By Heart of Illinois ABC
NORMAL – Deliveries of Rivian’s R1T electrical truck is being pushed back from August to September.
Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe made the announcement in a letter to customers recently.
The company in June said its deliveries of the R1Ts was being delayed until July.
The R1S model is now planned to be delivered “shortly thereafter in the fall,” the letter read.
“There are many reasons why our production ramp is taking longer than expected. The cascading impacts of the pandemic have had a compounding effect greater than anyone anticipated. Everything from facility construction, to equipment installation, to vehicle component supply (especially semiconductors) has been impacted by the pandemic,” Scaringe said.
Scaringe described the process of launching the trucks, as well as its commercial vans, as a “complex orchestra of coordinated and interlinked activities.”
Rivian took over the Normal-based manufacturing plant in 2017 after Mitsubishi left that site years before.
Since then, Rivian has been constructing and refitting the plant to start production of its electric vehicles.
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