The chief working officer of electric-truck startup
Rivian
RIVN -5.61%
Automotive Inc. left the corporate final month as the corporate was ramping up manufacturing of its first three fashions.
Rivian in the end produced greater than 1,000 autos by the top of 2021, an organization spokeswoman mentioned Monday. Rivian had warned final month that the corporate would seemingly fall a couple of hundred in need of its objective to construct 1,200 autos final 12 months.
Rod Copes retired from Rivian in December, the spokeswoman confirmed Monday. Mr. Copes’s retirement was deliberate for months, she mentioned, and his duties have been absorbed by the management staff. As of Monday afternoon, Mr. Copes was nonetheless recognized on Rivian’s web site as the corporate’s operations chief.
Rod Copes, who retired from Rivian in December, was beforehand an government on the Royal Enfield motorbike firm.
Photograph:
Mike De Sisti/Zuma Press
Mr. Copes couldn’t be instantly reached for remark. Earlier than becoming a member of the startup in June 2020, he had been an government at motorbike firms Royal Enfield, a unit of India’s
Eicher Motors Ltd.
, and
Harley-Davidson Inc.
In November, Rivian raised $13.7 billion within the largest preliminary providing on a U.S. alternate since 2014. The inventory skyrocketed in its early days buying and selling, hitting a closing excessive of $172.01 on its fifth day of buying and selling after itemizing at $78. Its market valuation eclipsed that of auto makers similar to
Ford Motor Co.
and
Common Motors Co.
The inventory has been on a gentle slide since. The downturn picked up pace in December, after Rivian chief government and founder RJ Scaringe informed analysts on the corporate’s first earnings name that the startup anticipated to overlook its manufacturing goal.
On Monday, Rivian shares fell 5.6% to $81.44 amid a broader market selloff.
Including strain lately to the inventory has been legacy auto makers encroaching on Rivian’s principal enterprise strains. Final week, world auto maker
Stellantis
NV, which owns the Ram and Chrysler manufacturers, mentioned it signed a deal to start supplying electrical supply vans to
Amazon.com Inc.
in 2023.
Amazon, which owns about 19% of Rivian, additionally has a deal to purchase 100,000 vans from Rivian, which the startup says it anticipates fulfilling by the top of 2025. Spokeswomen for each Amazon and Rivian mentioned their partnership stays intact and each firms anticipated Amazon to supply autos from a number of firms.
Different firms are near bringing electrical pickup vans to market, winnowing the first-mover benefit of Rivian’s R1T pickup truck, which started gross sales in September and is the one electrical pickup obtainable on the U.S. market. Ford plans to start gross sales of an electrical model of its F-150 pickup this spring, and GM final week revealed a brand new electrical model of its Silverado pickup to debut in 2023. The valuations of each Ford and GM have overtaken that of Rivian.
Electrical Automobiles
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Write to Ben Foldy at Ben.Foldy@wsj.com
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