It's just the latest in a number of layoffs that have hit EV automakers like Tesla, Lucid and especially Fisker
Electric vehicle maker Rivian $RIVN has informed officials in California that it is planning to carry out more layoffs in the state. In an April letter to the state’s Employment Development Department, Scott Griffin, Rivian’s vice president of people (read: head of HR) said the automaker planned to lay off over 120 employees, including 89 in Irvine and 28 in Palo Alto. From the Detroit News:
The job losses will begin in June, Griffin wrote, and are expected to be permanent.
In February, the company announced it was cutting 10% of its workforce, which sent the stock plummeting from the dizzying heights it had achieved after its 2021 initial public offering.
At that time, the company was valued at nearly $88 billion. On Monday, it was valued at about $11 billion. Reuters reported recently that, as of Dec. 31, the company had about 16,790 employees across North America and Europe.
“We continue to work to right-size the business and ensure alignment to our priorities,” a Rivian spokesman said in a statement. “As a follow-up to some of the changes we made to teams in February, in April we shared some additional changes to groups supporting the business. Around 1 percent of our workforce was affected by this change. This was a difficult decision, but a necessary one to support our goal to be gross margin positive by the end of the year.”
This is just the latest in a number of layoffs that have hit EV automakers like Tesla $TSLA, Lucid $LCID and especially Fisker. It seems wealthy folks who want an EV already have them, and these companies are struggling to entice that next round of buyers.
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