Rivian’s cost-cutting measures have gotten it a lot closer to profitability, but the company is warning that 2025 could still be a challenging year — especially because of the whorl of uncertainty caused by the new Trump administration.
The company announced Thursday its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial results, and along with it, shared plans to deliver between 46,000 and 51,000 EVs across 2025. Rivian cautioned that “changes to government policies and regulations, and a challenging demand environment” could affect those results, according to the shareholder letter the EV maker released alongside its results.
Rivian didn’t specify what those changes might be, but Trump said on the campaign trail that he was inclined to find a way to kill the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. Friend of the Trump administration Vivek Ramaswamy has also called for the clawback of a $6.6 billion loan from the Department of Energy to build a plant in Georgia. That loan was finalized three days before Trump took office.
“We’re really looking forward to working with the new administration and Department of Energy on our loan, and we share in the President’s desire to bring jobs back to the US,” Rivian’s chief financial officer Claire McDonough said on a conference call Thursday, noting that the company plans to create 7,500 manufacturing jobs at the planned Georgia plant. She said later in the call that Rivian is planning to take a hit as big as “hundreds of millions” of dollars related to tariffs, any loss of EV credits, and other policy changes.
“We really believe, and we’re very aligned with the administration on this, that the U.S. needs to continue to be a world leader in this regard, and our investment into electronics, into software, into autonomy and AI — these are really key areas for us as a country to continue to exercise a leadership position in,” CEO RJ Scaringe said on the call.
Rivian’s cost-cutting tear
Rivian spent much of 2024 on a cost-cutting tear. It laid off 10% of its workforce in February, and rolled out simplified, cheaper-to-make versions of its flagship EVs — the R1T pickup and the R1S SUV — in June. The company ended up changing 600 parts on those vehicles to drive down manufacturing costs, while also revamping its electric architecture and software user interface.
Changes like those helped Rivian notch $170 million of positive gross profit in the final quarter of 2024 – though $60 million of that came from software and services.
Rivian reported $1.7 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, a 32% increase from the same period in 2023. The bulk of its Q4 revenue — about $1.5 billion — came from the sale of 14,183 vehicles as well as $299 million from the sale of zero-emissions regulatory credits to automakers. For the year, Rivian reported $325 million in revenues from the sale of regulatory credits.
Revenue from software is increasingly playing an important role. Rivian generated $214 million from software and services in the fourth quarter, double the amount from the same-year ago period. Rivian reported $484 million in revenue for 2024 from software and services.
Rivian may be in the business of building and selling EVs, but its future is also largely pinned to software, namely through a lucrative joint venture with Volkswagen Group.
Revenue from software was primarily driven by charging and subscriptions fees, repair and maintenance services, and new vehicle electrical architecture and software development services provided by the joint venture, according to Rivian.
Gen AI comes to Rivian
The company has turned to generative AI as one tool to streamline customer service and reduce costs. The idea is to use AI to automate processes and “greatly reduce administrative overhead on all non-repair tasks,” the company said in its shareholder letter.
What that looks like in practice is an AI assistant, or chatbot, integrated into the Rivian app. The company rolled out a beta version in the Rivian mobile app for R1 customers this past December.
The AI assistant was built using a combination of in-house AI agent infrastructure and a third-party large language models, according to a Rivian spokesperson, who added the company has guardrails in place to limit the conversation to Rivian service and guide-related questions.
The AI assistant was designed to answer questions about service needs and general questions about the vehicle. A company spokesperson said it can also do basic troubleshooting, collect necessary information for service, and answer general questions about the vehicle.
This story has been updated with information from Rivian’s quarterly earnings call.
