Rivian Rolls Out World’s 1st Electric Pickup Truck for Customers

Based in California and backed by Amazon, EV startup Rivian has produced its first line of electric pickup trucks: R1T electric pickup. The firm is the first automaker to bring an electric pickup to the consumer market, beating Tesla, General Motors and others.

The announcement was made by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe in a tweet thus: “This morning our first customer vehicle drove off our production line in Normal.” Pictures of Rivian’s R1T electric pickup at its plant in Illinois were also attached in the tweet.

Rivian’s vehicles are “ready for sale in all 50 states,” after receiving full certifications from three regulators – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Air Resource Board, according to media reports.

Deliveries of the R1T, Rivian’s electric pickup, are set to begin in January 2022, according to its website, after an initial delay earlier this summer. The vehicle has an estimated range of 314 miles, and comes with an air compressor, a built-in cooler under the bed, and a tailgate you can control through an app. Rivian is also working on the R1S, an electric SUV.

Other highly-anticipated electric pickup trucks from established manufacturers include Tesla’s Cybertruck (whose production was pushed back to 2022), Ford’s F-150 (which is likely to have a spring 2022 production start date), and GM’s Hummer EV (which is expected to go into production sometime this fall).

Rivian has raised more money than any other EV startup that hasn’t gone public, according to Insider. Amazon invested more than $1 billion in Rivian and ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from the company in February this year. Rivian was aiming for IPO later this year with a valuation of around $80 billion, Bloomberg reported in August. Sources now say that the company aims to raise as much as $8 billion in IPO.