The US Department of Energy has given the crisis-hit car brand Rivian a loan of 6.6 billion dollars, corresponding to 46 billion Danish kroner.
The crisis-hit car brand Rivian has been promised a loan from the American government of 46 billion Danish kroner.
The loan, which comes from the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, is earmarked for the development and construction of an electric vehicle plant in Stanton Springs North, Georgia.
If the loan is finally approved, it will finance a new factory with an annual production capacity of up to 400,000 cars. The factory will produce the models R2 and R3, which the US government calls electric cars for the mass market, although the starting price for the R2 is expected to be around 330,000 Danish kroner.
The government expects that the factory will create 2,000 jobs in the construction phase and 7,500 jobs in operation before 2030.
This is written by the news agency AP .
In addition, the factory is expected to increase Rivian's production, which can make their products more competitive on price and open for international expansion. The electric cars from the factory are expected to be able to reduce annual petrol consumption by 553 million litres.
Rivian plans to divide the project into two phases. The first phase is planned to start production in 2028 with an annual capacity of 200,000 cars.
– This loan will enable Rivian to scale our US production capacity more aggressively for our competitively priced R2 and R3 corvettes that emphasize both capacity and affordability, says Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe.
However, the loan has not yet been finally approved. And there is already speculation as to whether the Trump administration will try to block it.
Rivian has previously postponed the project with new car models, and announced that the R2 will initially be produced at their factory in Normal, Illinois. At the time, the car manufacturer justified the decision by saying that they wanted to delay the launch in order to find savings of over 16.5 billion Danish kroner.
Rivian has already received up to DKK 40 billion from Volkswagen. The Germans are betting that the Americans can supply a replacement for their own failed prestige project. Read more about it here .
