Rivian has fired their head of production
The US electric car start-up Rivian has apparently parted company with its head of production Charly Mwangi. The background is the problems with the production start-up of Rivian’s first two models. In addition to the personnel change, production is also to be restructured.
The news was leaked from an internal email that was made available to Bloomberg. In this email to employees, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe announced not only Mwangi’s departure, but also his successor: To get the ailing production back on track, Rivian is hiring Frank Klein from automotive supplier and contract manufacturer Magna, as leaked in March. Klein will take up his post as Rivian’s new COO on 1 June 2022, according to the new report.
Rivian also plans to restructure, separating its commercial division, which includes electric delivery trucks for Amazon, from its consumer business, which includes the R1T electric pickup and R1S electric SUV.
“This is an important time for our growing business, all in an extremely challenging environment,” Bloomberg quotes from Scaringe’s letter. “We are well positioned to succeed in the long term, but we need to continually evaluate the way we operate.” According to the letter, many of the company’s senior manufacturing, engineering and supply chain executives will also report directly to Klein in the future as part of the restructuring.
Rivian began mass production of the R1T electric pickup in autumn 2021, later adding the R1S electric SUV and the EDV 700 Amazon delivery van. Although the production start date had been postponed several times, the ramp-up went bumpily. According to reports, production had to be stopped as early as January in order to make numerous improvements to the assembly line.
In the course of announcing the figures for the first quarter, Rivian had stated that it had produced 5,000 vehicles so far. This year, it is expected to produce 25,000 vehicles. In addition to the problems in its own production in Illinois, Rivian was also struggling with the supply chain.
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