Amazon-backed Rivian begins production of electric pickup truck

After much delay, Amazon-backed Rivian has finally put its first electric pick-up to production. The announcement was made by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe who took to the social media and wrote, “This morning our first customer vehicle drove off our production line in Normal." The tweet also included pictures of Rivian's R1T electric pickup at its plant in Illinois.

Rivian has already received regulatory approvals from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board. A company spokesperson also informed that the brand's debut electric vehicle is ready for sale in 50 states of the United States.

This makes the electric vehicle startup the first company to bring an electric pickup truck into the market ahead of Tesla, General Motors and others, said a report by Reuters. In earlier reports, Tesla had confirmed that the production of Cybertruck has been pushed to 2022. Also, it did not set any timeframe as to when it will start mass production of the electric truck.

Tesla introduced the Cybertruck in 2019 and had said back then that it will reach the market by the end of 2021. Tesla did confirm the delay for all the three variants of the EV. It is one of the most anticipated products from the EV major as it has already received more than a million reservations. However, the Cybertruck is about to face some stiff competition as other automakers too have their plans for electric pickup trucks.

A report said that Ford's F-150 Lightning electric pickup received about 1.3 lakh reservations and the automaker is also doubling its production due to strong demand. Ford will launch the EV next year.

Rivian, which is also backed by Ford, filed papers with regulators to go public last month. The report mentioned that Rivian will seek a valuation of around $70-80 billion at the time of its IPO.

(With inputs from Reuters)