Where are Rivian EVs made? – Jalopnik

The name Rivian sounds like it is an exotic and foreign luxury brand, like a French chocolatier or an Italian leather factory, that conjures up images of a Riviera cruise or a hike through an Alpine canyon. In reality, the brand is as American as they come, building electric vans, pickup trucks and SUVs on American soil. Founded in 2009 by Steve-O lookalike RJ Scaringe, the company has become one of the global leaders in electric vehicle evolution and a driver of the growth of the U.S. automotive industry. As a technologically progressive automaker with a start date in the 2000s and a brand identity intertwined with the beauty of the natural world around us, you might think it builds all its trucks in beautiful coastal California cities like Santa Cruz or Ojai. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Midwesterners are good at two things: building things and enjoying the outdoors, and Rivian understood that because it based its manufacturing operations right in the heart of Midwestern culture. Rivian took a page out of Tesla’s playbook and entered mass production by purchasing an existing car factory and modernizing it to produce electric cars, but unlike Tesla, the company opted for a factory closer to the car-oriented production workers, engineers and all other OEM suppliers. On this basis the behemoth Rivian was built, and since 2009 the factory has produced approximately 150,000 vehicles. That’s well below its capacity of 100,000 units per year, but the company is in serious growth mode.

Rivian purchased the former Diamond Star Motors plant in Normal, Illinois.

Rivian took ownership of the Normal facility in 2017 for a paltry $16 million. The company burst into production around September 2021 with the all-electric R1T pickup, delayed somewhat by COVID lockdowns and an international microchip shortage, but still beating Ford, General Motors and Tesla. Since then, the factory has become the production site of the company’s R1S electric SUV and the EDV electric van made for Amazon. Now that the smaller R2 model will also start production in 2026, the factory is once again buzzing with action and productivity. Rivian is currently working on two additional production facilities – one in Europe and one in Georgia, but we’ll talk more about that later – and continues to invest in the Normal factory. The US EV carmaker is currently investing approximately $120 million in building a nearby supplier park to reduce product lead times and storage costs.

For the former company, Rivian broke ground on a new multi-billion dollar facility just east of Atlanta, Georgia in September 2025. The first phase of this facility is expected to be on board in 2028 and produce as many as 200,000 units per year, and a second phase will boost that capacity to 400,000 units by 2030. Like Normal, Illinois, the new Rivian factory is also located in a city with an odd name, this time Social Circle, Georgia. It is expected that both the R2 and R3 will be produced at this facility for global consumption.

In terms of European production, Rivian entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Mercedes-Benz in 2022 to produce its electric vans in Europe for the local market. Both companies want to strengthen their position in the European van market. Electric vans are becoming increasingly popular among delivery customers due to their ability to avoid charges in emission zones in major cities, increase vehicle uptime and reduce total cost of ownership.

At this time, no Rivian vehicles have been produced in Social Circle, Georgia or Stuttgart, Germany, but they are expected to do so soon.