Rivian and the state of Georgia plan to announce the company’s second electric vehicle (EV) factory in the U.S., which will be located in Atlanta — reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Citing sources close to the matter, the publication says Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Rivian officials will be holding a ceremony next Thursday to announce the project and its specifics.
Rivian’s second U.S. manufacturing facility will be developed at a site along I-20, straddling Walton and Morgan counties and located about an hour’s drive east of Atlanta, between the cities of Social Circle and Rutledge, the sources said.
The factory site is said to include 1,978 acres of land, and is known as the “East Atlanta Megasite”. It is one of the largest parcels of industrial land in the state.
The Joint Development Authority of Jasper, Morgan, Newton & Walton Counties, a government economic development agency, has reportedly been in talks with multiple property owners to sell land near the location.
This is likely the second U.S. assembly plant that Rivian confirmed earlier this year. Going by the plans Rivian originally announced in July, the EV upstart could inject up to $5 billion USD of funding into the site.
The facility, once complete, will produce 200,000 electric vans, SUVs, and trucks at peak capacity, and provide 8,000 jobs. The multi-billion-dollar investment is expected to bear fruit, in full, by the end of the decade.
The project has already garnered some opposition that it will ultimately have to overcome for regulatory approval, though. Property owners in the vicinity have already expressed environmental concerns if an industrial manufacturing facility is erected on the land.
“Our family didn’t buy and continue to own farmland here because we were hoping a massive car plant would open across the street,” Felton Jenkins, who owns farmland near the proposed factory site, wrote in a letter to Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe.
Rivian is backed by veteran automaker Ford and eCommerce giant Amazon, and didn’t actually start selling cars until September when its first production unit rolled off the line. For now, Rivian plans to continue producing vehicles out of its Illinois factory.
Rivian went public a little over a month ago, raising $11.9 billion USD in its Initial Public Offering. At the time of writing, the company has a market capitalization of $97.79 billion USD — that’s higher than experienced automakers like General Motors and Ford.
