You may have seen a rolled Rivian on Facebook during the past few days. North Carolina owner Benjamin Ponds posted pictures of his truck on Facebook to warn other owners, “these trucks will roll easier than you’d expect them to.” Rivian was interested in the incident and sent engineers to investigate. Ponds isn’t looking to sue but is generally interested in why the truck rolled easier than he expected it to.
Ponds says Rivian’s response has been impressive as the engineers examined the scene of the incident and retrieved data that could help them determine why it rolled. He said he has some ideas but he’s wanting to find out what Rivian discovers before he shares his information. Ponds says he wasn’t showing off but admits he was having fun with the truck in the field when it rolled.
Just Wants To Park It
When you buy a home in one of those fancy subdivisions that has all those fancy subdivision covenants like no trucks parked outside of your garage overnight, guess what, that applies to you too, not just everyone else in your subdivision. Floridian Glen Gordon bought a Rivian and now his homeowner’s association is reminding him he can’t leave it in his driveway overnight.
The Homeowner’s Association’s solution is for Gordon to park the Rivian in his garage. Gordon argues he doesn’t have room in his garage and has retained an attorney.
Stock At An All Time Low
Rivian went public with a famously successful initial public offering at a price of $78 per share. The stock price took off from there, reaching well over $100 per share. But Rivian shares have tanked recently dropping to an all-time low of $18.55 on Friday.
UAW Attempting To Unionize Plant
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union helped 12 employees file complaints against Rivian with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and shared the filings with international press. It’s no secret the UAW longs to unionize the plant.
The real issue is are accident rates at Rivian more or less than you expect at a plant employing 6700 people. Rivian points out that 12 of 6700 is 0.2% of people in the plant. Rivian also said data it compiles for OSHA shows it’s Total Recordable Incident Rate is 2.5 cases for every 200,000 hours worked, less than the industry average of 6.4 cases.
Yet David Michaels, who led OSHA under former President Barack Obama has criticized Rivian as being far from operational excellence saying that the factory management is not doing its job and that these reported injuries reflect poor management control of production processes.
Bedbugs
Rivian never admitted it had an infestation of bedbugs on a forklift in its plant despite several reports of them from employees. Instead it says it took preventative measures using its pest control company. According to Rivian the company has since treated all forklifts and tuggers, all of its transportation shuttles and all warehouse spaces.
Mercedes Joint Venture Paused
“At this point in time, we believe focusing on our consumer business, as well as our existing commercial business, represent the most attractive near-term opportunities to maximize value for Rivian,” Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said in a company statement. Mercedes was concerned about Rivian’s continuously shifting priorities.
The companies had planned to share a facility in Europe where each would manufacture their electric vans. Mercedes is going forward with their plans.
Harassment Suit
Rivian is attempting to have a woman who sued the company for harassment go through arbitration. The suit was filed in September. A new federal law prohibiting forced arbitration in harassment cases went into effect in March. Rivian is arguing some of the woman’s claims pre date the March law.
Production
Rivian contines to state it is on track to produce 25,000 vehicles by the end of the year. They have a week left.
Second Shift
Rivian now runs two shifts. If it reaches it’s production target for the year much of the credit will go to the fact that it got that shift up and running in November.
