EVwire Brief: Rivian held its Q1 2026 earnings call, and we have put together the full transcript of the whole Q&A for you. 

Here’s the Table of Contents so you can jump to the topic that interests you. Do take note that this is just Part 1 of the call. Part 2 can be accessed here.

Chip Newcom, VP Investor Relations at Rivian: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Rivian's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, I'm joined by R.J. Scaringe, our CEO and founder, Claire McDonough, our Chief Financial Officer, and Javier Varela, our Chief Operations Officer. 

Before we begin, matters discussed on this call, including comments and responses to questions, reflect management's views as of today. We will also be making statements related to our business operations and financial performance that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are described in our SEC filings and the earnings presentation we filed with the SEC today.

During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of historical non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings presentation and press release. Just before the earnings call, we posted our earnings presentation, which includes an overview of our progress over the recent months and replaces our shareholder letter. 

I encourage you to read it for additional details around some of the items we will cover on today's call. Following our prepared remarks, we will be taking questions from sell-side analysts. In the interest of keeping our call to one hour, we would ask these analysts to limit any follow-on questions to one.

With that, I'll turn the call over to R.J.

R.J. Scaringe: Thanks, Chip. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for today's call. Last week, I was thrilled to celebrate the start of saleable R2 production with our team at our plant in Normal, Illinois. This is an exciting milestone in Rivian's history and the culmination of all the hard work and energy from so many people across the company. 

As I've said before, I believe the R2 will be a game-changer for our customers and will be a key driver of our company's long-term growth and profitability in an American automotive marketplace starved for high-quality EV choice. I believe R2 is an attractively priced option sized for everyday adventures from school pickups to weekend trips that is targeting the very popular five-passenger SUV and crossover segment.

With R2, we are taking our design, performance, and technology and bringing it to a significantly broader audience without losing what makes Rivian unmistakably Rivian. We've started R2 deliveries to our employees, and I have to say I absolutely love having R2 as my daily driver. I could not be more excited to get this vehicle into the hands of lots of customers starting this spring. 

In developing R2, our team relentlessly focused on achieving structural cost reductions while maintaining the desirability of the product. For R2, our bill of materials is expected to be approximately half of our R1 platform. For non-BOM cost of goods sold, we expect to see a reduction of more than 50%, resulting from a focus on design for manufacturing and leveraged fixed cost efficiencies through higher production volumes. This is how we expect to profitably deliver R2 at an accessible price point at scale without compromising performance and utility customers love from Rivian.

Key design changes for R2 include part eliminations and reductions through the introduction of large die castings, a structural battery pack, a new highly efficient drive unit, the evolution of our next-generation electrical architecture, which removes miles of copper wire, and the consolidation of our high-voltage electronics into a single enclosure. We are also seeing significant sourcing leverage relative to R1 across a variety of components.

Now, as we begin to scale our operations in Normal with R2, we're very excited to partner with the US Department of Energy to grow our manufacturing footprint in Georgia. R2 provides the opportunity to expand the Rivian brand to millions of drivers. As a result, we made the strategic decision to increase the production capacity for the first phase of our Georgia plant by 50%, bringing it to 300,000 units of annual production capacity for our midsize vehicle platform. 

This change is expected to boost cost efficiency while still providing significant room for future expansion in later phases and support thousands of jobs in Georgia as we grow American manufacturing and work to ensure the US retains its leadership in innovation and technology and transportation. We remain on track for the production of our midsize vehicle platform to begin in Georgia in late 2028.

Turning to our technology roadmap, in March, we were excited to announce a new strategic partnership with Uber to accelerate our shared autonomous vehicle goals. In the not-too-distant future, I believe advanced autonomy capabilities will be a key differentiator for customers and a driver of market share. At the core of our third-generation autonomy hardware is the Rivian autonomy processor or RAP 1. 

The development of our RAP 1 chip is on track and we are progressing well on validation and reliability testing. Our integrated approach allows our hardware team to rapidly iterate with our software team and our autonomy feature development is progressing well and we continue to expect to begin rolling out point-to-point capabilities by the end of the year. 

Finally, in the coming weeks, we are excited to launch the Rivian Assistant on R1 and R2 vehicles. The Rivian Assistant is our new AI-powered voice assistant that is built to be a digital co-pilot with integration into the vehicle ecosystem and other external apps. 

In closing, this quarter, our team has executed across many fronts, laying a strong foundation for the years ahead. As an American automotive technology company, we're building for a future that we believe will be fully electric, autonomous, and AI-defined. With our category-defining brand, the launch of R2, which is our first mass-market vehicle, vertically integrated and extensible technology, and a direct-to-consumer sales model, I couldn't be more excited about the opportunity ahead for our customers and for our business. With that, I'll pass the call over to Claire to discuss our financial results.

Claire McDonough: Thanks, R.J. and good afternoon everyone. As R.J. shared, the start of saleable R2 production and initial employee deliveries are a landmark moment for Rivian. By building R2 in Normal, we're strategically leveraging our existing manufacturing footprint in Illinois to drive greater fixed cost absorption across our entire vehicle portfolio. 

As discussed previously, R2 production is starting with a single shift operation, and we expect to scale to two shifts by the end of 2026 as we ramp towards our north star target of profitably delivering 4,000 vehicles per week in Normal. Delivering a strong 2026 exit rate for R2 production and deliveries is a key focus for our team as we believe it will directly translate into positive automotive gross profit for the business.

Turning to the results for the first quarter, as depicted on slide 11 of the earnings presentation, our consolidated revenue in the first quarter was approximately $1.4 billion, an 11% increase over the same quarter last year. Consolidated gross profit was $119 million and our gross margin was 9%. Gross profit included $122 million of depreciation and $27 million of stock-based compensation expense. Adjusted EBITDA losses for the first quarter were $472 million driven by our $119 million of gross profit and increased adjusted operating expenses as we prepare to scale R2 and invest in our autonomy roadmap.

In the first quarter, we produced 10,236 vehicles and delivered 10,365 vehicles, which was the primary driver of our $908 million of automotive revenue. Automotive gross profit loss was $62 million compared to $92 million of gross profit for the same quarter last year, primarily driven by the hundred million dollar decrease in sales of automotive regulatory credits and lower production volumes, which resulted in a $45 million increase in depreciation and stock-based compensation expense combined. While current macro and geopolitical factors are creating added complexity, cost, and uncertainty, our team continues to work hard to manage supply chain risks and offset elevated costs.

Our software and services segment reported another strong quarter as depicted on slide 13. During the first quarter, the segment generated $473 million of revenue, a 49% year-over-year increase, and $181 million of gross profit. $282 million or approximately 60% of software and services revenue was attributable to our joint venture with Volkswagen Group. We also experienced strong growth from remarketing and parts and service. During the quarter, we also recognized a $56 million gain in other income in our financials related to the series A capital raise and related deconsolidation of Mind Robotics from our financial statements. We currently own approximately 38% of Mind Robotics on a shares outstanding basis.

Looking at our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with approximately $4.8 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. With regard to our funding roadmap in 2026, we expect to receive a total of $2.55 billion of capital from our strategic partners. Today, we received $1 billion from Volkswagen Group in exchange for equity following successful completion of the winter testing milestone by RVtec. The testing program spans several months utilizing reference vehicles from the Volkswagen, Audi, and Scout brands. 

Later this quarter, we expect to receive $300 million from Uber in exchange for equity related to the signing of our partnership agreement subject to certain conditions. And later this year, we expect to receive $1 billion in non-recourse debt from Volkswagen Group and an additional $250 million from Uber in exchange for equity subject to the completion of certain milestones and conditions related to robotaxi development. As outlined on slide 14, this brings total available liquidity and expected capital in 2026 to nearly $8 billion.

Additionally, we're very excited to partner with the US Department of Energy to grow our US manufacturing footprint. The up to $4.5 billion DOE loan, which consists of approximately $4 billion of principal and approximately $500 million of capitalized interest, provides low-cost financing for our 300,000-unit capacity greenfield expansion in Georgia, bringing Rivian to meaningful scale. We expect the 515,000 total units of capacity between our Illinois and Georgia plants will provide Rivian a path to free cash flow positive once fully ramped. We expect to draw on the loan by early 2027 subject to certain conditions.

Two weeks ago, our Normal factory sustained damage from a tornado. I'm proud of the way our teams have rallied together to get production back up and running while we repair the damages. Despite the weather impact, our 2026 guidance remains unchanged. We continue to expect full-year deliveries of between 62,000 and 67,000 total vehicles across R1, R2, and our commercial vans. 

We also continue to expect to deliver approximately 9,000 to 11,000 vehicles in Q2 as we expect the ramp of R2 deliveries will be back-half weighted. While we continue to believe our gross profit will increase year-over-year, we expect the complexity of a new vehicle launch will negatively impact our automotive gross profit in the second and third quarters before becoming a benefit for our overall operations in the fourth quarter as we ramp production and deliveries.

As a reminder, we believe this is a transition year for the automotive segment's path towards long-term profitability as we scale R2. For 2026, we continue to expect an adjusted EBITDA loss of between 2.1 to $1.8 billion. While economic and geopolitical conditions, including supply chain and international conflicts, pose risks, we remain steadfast in our plans to invest behind key growth drivers. We continue to progress our autonomy roadmap and the expansion of our sales and service footprint as we scale with R2. We believe these strategic investments will deliver long-term value to our shareholders. 

Finally, for 2026, we are maintaining our capital expenditure guidance of $1.95 to $2.05 billion. Our CAPEX spend primarily relates to finalizing construction and tooling for R2 in Normal, the continued buildout of our sales, service, and charging infrastructure, and kicking off construction of our greenfield plant in Georgia. In closing, I'd like to congratulate our teams again for the successful start of saleable R2 production and the strong execution in the first quarter. We continue to believe that R2 and our technology roadmap will be truly transformative for the growth and profitability of our business.

I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator to open the line for Q&A.

Operator: Thank you. For the Q&A section of today's session, we will be utilizing the raise hand feature. If you would like to ask a question, click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once prompted, please unmute yourself and begin with your question. We will now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Thank you. Our first question comes from Shreas Patil from Wolfe Research. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Shreas Patil: Hey. Hey. Thanks so much. Appreciate you taking the questions. Maybe first just picking up on a comment you made earlier, Claire. If you could help give us some more color on some of the actions you're taking to mitigate the increase in commodity costs and some of the metals prices that we've seen increase recently. And what's been the magnitude of increase if you could help frame that?

R.J. Scaringe: Well, thanks, Shreas, for the question. Yeah, we're spending a lot of time of course focused on all the changes that are happening from a supply chain point of view and, you know, in terms of raw materials and some of the cost of metals specifically aluminum, this has been a big focus for us. 

Fortunately, our sourcing team has been—we've grown our sourcing team and evolved our sourcing team over the last handful of years where supply chain continues to be an area where there's a lot of unknowns, there's a lot of variability and a need for us to be very hands-on and very proactive. And so we've been proactive in both our relationship with existing suppliers but also in making sure we have—particularly on some of these key commodities—alternative sources of supply.

Shreas Patil: Okay, great. And then maybe Claire, just to clarify, I think you had made a comment about how when Normal and the Georgia facility are fully ramped, you'd be getting to free cash flow positive. I just wanted to make sure if I understood that correctly and if that's the case, you know, that could be quite a while from now. So maybe just help us understand sort of the trajectory of CAPEX maybe near-term but then also as we kind of think ahead and you start to kind of put more in the ground at Georgia.

Claire McDonough: Sure. Shreas, the comment that I made on the Rivian ramp of its Normal facility plus Georgia facility is what takes Rivian to free cash flow positive in the future. As we talked a little bit about in our prepared remarks, importantly, we have the $4.5 billion of capital from the Department of Energy loan, which provides up to 80% loan-to-value against the buildout of our future Georgia facility. 

So while we certainly will see an anticipated increase in our capital expenditures as we approach the start of production in Georgia, we do have significant offsets from a capital roadmap and the 4.5 billion is just one component of the full $13.6 billion of total liquidity and expected capital through both the cash that we have on hand on our balance sheet, the added availability of our ABL facility, and then the expected capital from our partners with both Volkswagen and Uber that we expect to receive over the coming years as well.

Shreas Patil: Okay, great. And maybe just one quick clarification, the DOE loan, has there been any change to that? I think the original amount was 6.6 billion that was available. Just curious if there's any change there.

Claire McDonough: Yes. Included within our financial release today, we provided an update on the Department of Energy loans. So we'll now have $4.5 billion of loan capacity that will go towards the buildout of our first phase of capacity expansion in Georgia. We've also increased the capacity of the Georgia site, the initial capacity from 200,000 units to 300,000 units. And so the comment that I made in my prepared remarks is really the importance of the funding roadmap especially as we think about the Georgia site specifically taking Rivian to meaningful scale in the future.

Shreas Patil: Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Joe Spak from UBS. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Joe Spak: Um, thank you. Um, Claire, just to maybe pick up on that on the DOE loan part. And to clarify, like obviously this first phase is an increase from that 200 to 300, but—and again admittedly just been able to skim the document—it does seem like maybe the total project scope is now capped at 300 versus you know before it was supposed to be 200 in Phase 1 and 200 in Phase 2 for 400. So I want to make sure I understand that and then if you still see an opportunity over time to grow further in Georgia.

Claire McDonough: Yeah. So the strategic decision that we took was to increase the initial phase of production capacity to the 300,000 units on our Georgia site. The full initial capacity will be put on the upper pad at the site. So we have the lower pad, which is still going to be entirely untouched greenfield for future expansion.

Joe Spak: Okay. But and that might be funded more organically in the future, not necessarily with a loan or it's TBD, I guess. But the loan is really only up for the 300, correct?

Claire McDonough: So the loan is for the initial phase. The important piece is we've increased the loan size associated with the initial phase as we've also scaled the production volume as well.

Joe Spak: Okay. Um, and then just um you know I appreciate the comments on input costs. But I guess the other thing that I was wondering about was with tariffs—and this has sort of come up with a lot of companies this far. Can you remind us like what you've paid in IEEPA roundabout over the past year and have you filed for any reimbursement and was anything booked in the quarter related to any potential reimbursements?

Claire McDonough: We did not book anything this quarter associated with IEEPA tariffs, but we do believe that the recovery of those IEEPA tariffs is possible in the future. And I contextualize the sizing to be in the tens of millions of dollars of future benefit.

Joe Spak: Okay. But and is that considered at all in your reiterated outlook or or that would be, you know, upside? I guess it's not significant.

Claire McDonough: I would characterize it as considered within our current outlook.

Joe Spak: Okay. Um, and then just lastly, like I know you talked with Uber, you talked about pulling forwards, you know, raising R&D in 27. Does any of that work start to seep into 26? And is there a change to the R&D outlook for this year or is it really more of a 27 factor?

Claire McDonough: You'll see the pace of acceleration increase in terms of the spend towards autonomy in 27, but we'll certainly see acceleration throughout the course of this year as well. If you look at Q1, our cash R&D expense increased about 22% this year for that quarter. You could directionally think about that as being, you know, more of a year-over-year type run rate as we look out over the remainder of the year.

Joe Spak: Thank you. Very helpful. I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Itay Michaeli from TD Cowen. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Itay Michaeli: Uh great. Thanks. Hi everybody. Um just first going back to the Georgia capacity optimization, curious if it has any impact on your previous long-term financial targets at 25% gross margin and maybe on that as well if you can share your initial kind of takeaways on R2 demand generation since you kind of launched the trims.

R.J. Scaringe: Well thanks, Itay. Yeah, and I think obviously the decision to increase the capacity of the first phase of Georgia coincides with—I should say it reflects—a level of confidence in our products and our business. Um, I think most importantly, we've just started production on R2 out of our existing Normal, Illinois facility and we've had early media events and early customer events and the level of enthusiasm for the product has just been outstanding. 

So everything from the packaging of the vehicle to the way that it drives to the integration of technology—the overall response has been overwhelmingly positive and so that bodes extremely well for the ramp up, you know, happening over the course of this year and into next year. But it also sets up a wonderful foundation for us as we think about further capacity on this platform, both for R2 as well as R3 and variants of those vehicles out of the Georgia facility.

Itay Michaeli: Terrific. And then maybe as a follow-up on the Uber announcement, I'm curious whether the robotaxis themselves that will go into the Uber network will have the exact same hardware set as the personal vehicles. And I ask because if you're going to launch in 2028 in complex domains like San Francisco and Miami, would that not also imply a pretty wide ODD for the personal vehicles if they're both operating on the same hardware?

R.J. Scaringe: You know, we talked about this during our Autonomy Day late last year, but I think it's important to recognize there's going to be a whole series of steps we make in terms of progressing towards Level 4. And so in that series of steps, the first later this year on our consumer vehicles is launching our point-to-point capability. And so that's the ability for the vehicle to drive entirely on its own to an address. And you know, I just this week had lots of regular rides internally and I had a great ride with James and the team and it's so exciting to see how much it's progressed and our technology's progressed even since our Autonomy Day late last year.

And so we're very encouraged by this, but that first step of making point-to-point available to customers is going to be a really important step forward for our consumer vehicles. As we continue to go into 2027, we'll be allowing in specific areas eyes-off. And so it's hands-off, eyes-off. That's a Level 3 capability. And then as we go into 2028, as you said, that's when we'll have our first deployments of a Level 4 capability in a robotaxi. And in the robotaxi variant, there will be some additional sensing on the vehicle. 

So it will be different than the pure consumer vehicle, but we are planning to have a personal version of Level 4 as well. And we've talked about that quite a bit. We think the market for a vehicle that you own being able to completely drive itself—do things like drop you at the airport, go to the grocery store, get groceries for you, pick up kids from a sports event—these are really high value-creating activities for the Level 4 capability and we see them on both robotaxi applications and on personally owned applications.

Itay Michaeli: That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Dan Levy from Barclays. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Dan Levy: Great, thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to first start with R2 and the path to getting to a positive gross margin, which I think you said would be by the end of the year. Maybe you could just walk through, you know, the gating factors. Um, even with the raw mats, do you still have the confidence you have the right BOM to achieve this? And what milestones do we need to see to make sure that the production ramp is still on track? What are the sort of most limiting factors that you still have to address on this ramp?

R.J. Scaringe: Yeah, we've talked a lot about the cost structure of a vehicle and a huge component of this is of course the bill of materials. And the bill of materials, different than the non-bill of materials COGS, is contractuals. So these are negotiations that happen across hundreds of suppliers and, you know, very different than when we sourced R1. 

We went into the R2 sourcing with a lot of momentum and much better supplier leverage and just the level of confidence in Rivian as a business and the level of excitement around R2 helped us put together a set of suppliers that are both very enthusiastic but that's demonstrated through attractive commercial terms. And so as it stands the bill of materials for R2 is about half that of R1.

And there's of course things we can't predict like raw material changes and DRAM shortages, but the vast majority of the BOM is very stable and we have a lot of confidence in being able to achieve the target BOM which supports the very healthy gross margins we've talked about in the past. Now with regards to the plant, I'll invite Javier just to comment on some of the progress that's happening in terms of ramping up over the course of the next several months.

Javier Varela: Yeah, thank you, RJ. Indeed, as you explained some minutes ago, we had last week the celebration of the first saleable builds and deliveries to customers this week. So very proud of the situation we are achieving now. The industrial process is ready, the people are ready as well. We have been through the right training and build cycles and I would say the plant is prepared, processes are defined, and we are very confident in our capability to deliver. 

I feel confident as well regarding our team in place. We have brought in a group of seasoned leaders that they have done launches back in the past and have big experience on that area. And um we are on the other hand managing the supply chain making sure every supplier scales with us. We have boots on the ground supporting some key suppliers and we are doing this with our mindset in supplier relationships—relationships of transparency and collaboration. Resilient supply chain agility and intelligence are key factors for success.

Dan Levy: Great. Great. Thank you. Um, as a follow-up, R.J., I wanted to double-click on the point you gave in the prior question from Itay about getting to L4. You'll have point-to-point at the end of this year and you'll only have the vehicles with the LiDAR end of this year, beginning of next year. It does seem like there's probably a lot of testing that has to happen between when you get those cars with the LiDAR out to the point where you have a launch. So just help us understand, you know, what the testing curve looks like, what you need to do from when you have the cars with the LiDAR to being able to unlock L4 because it does seem like there's a lot of miles that have to be driven on that new vehicle.

R.J. Scaringe: Yeah, I think a really important point to make here is just the way the self-driving system is architected. So this is the platform that we launched actually on our Gen 2 R1 vehicles. It is designed around an end-to-end approach where we're building—really what we call a large driving model—but think of it as a neural net or a foundation model for driving and that model is being fed with all of our Gen 2 R1 vehicles and of course our launch R2 vehicles and ultimately as you said our R2 vehicles that include a LiDAR. But very different than previous architectures around self-driving where they were rules-based and more classically controlled, as you add more perception and as you add more compute the capability of the model only grows; you don't lose the previous knowledge embedded in the model.

So I often sort of compare it to: imagine if you learned to drive with bad vision and then I handed you a pair of glasses—you wouldn't forget your knowledge as a driver, you'd just suddenly be able to see and perceive things that you may have missed previously. So you become a better driver. And then imagine we could hand you a 10x multiplier to your compute capability, effectively make your brain 10 times smarter. Again, you wouldn't forget what you knew before, but suddenly you'd start to notice new patterns and more nuance in ways that you hadn't in the past. 

And so that's very important to recognize as a very fundamental difference in how the model's built today and what we're creating versus the more AV 1.0 stack where they were, as I described, very rules-based and very classically controlled. And so because of that, the data accumulation has happened already on R1 and that will continue with the growth in our car park with R2—all feeds into our overall LDM into this large driving model. And even as we think about introducing new sensors, things like our LiDAR, this is not as if it's first on the vehicle when it's delivered to customers.

We have lots of prototypes today that are running with those. If you're in the Bay Area and happen to be anywhere around Palo Alto, you'll probably see lots of Rivians with a lot of additional sensors and that's part of a ground truth fleet that again is feeding into this large driving model to accelerate the speed at which that model is learning. You know, think of it as a brain—the speed at which we're teaching it to drive and the work that will go into ultimately launching a customer-facing version of point-to-point which today, as I said, I was in one of our cars driving around full point-to-point early this week—it's really exciting—but we want to have it be extremely robust when it launches to customers. But all that work is accretive to what ultimately will be going into our Level 4 platform.

Dan Levy: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Andrew Pisechko from Morgan Stanley. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Andrew Pisechko: Great. Thanks so much for taking the question. Um, maybe just to start on the commercial side of your business. It looks like Amazon made up almost 50% of your auto revenue in the quarter. Um, so a little bit above historical run rates. Can you just maybe talk to what you're seeing with that relationship and maybe even outside of Amazon? Um, the level of interest you're seeing in the commercial product since you launched that extended-range version of the commercial vehicle.

R.J. Scaringe: Yeah, our relationship with Amazon continues to be something that we're very proud of. We've spent a lot of time on this program from its initial kickoff quite some time ago in 2019 through its initial launch and now ramping, deploying—that's everything from not only building the vehicles but on Amazon's side getting their operations and their infrastructure ready to ingest a lot of EVs. And what we're now seeing is a reflection of all that work, all the cumulative work that's happened to date that's allowing the volumes for our van program within Amazon to grow, as you pointed out, pretty meaningfully. 

And we expect that increased demand for our vans to continue and that's super rewarding to see. It's fun to see all the vans on the road. But that's going to continue to ramp up with Amazon. Now in terms of other customers and other applications, of course, Amazon's by a significant degree the largest operator and so they're the ideal lead customer if you will. But there are lots of other opportunities we've seen, but in the immediate term our focus remains on Amazon and ramping to support them.

Andrew Pisechko: Okay, that makes sense. Um, and then maybe just um I just want to ask one more question on the DOE revised loan piece here. Understand the movement in Phase 1 and upsizing that. I'm curious why you might not want to use the DOE funding for the eventual Phase 2. Is this something initiated on your end or did maybe they approach you in terms of revising that? Just kind of curious the thought process around why not tap that low-cost funding for the eventual Phase 2 whenever that comes about. Thank you.

Claire McDonough: Thanks, Andrew. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we're really excited to partner with the Department of Energy on Rivian's $4.5 billion loan, which enables thousands of American jobs and helps us establish the US's strength in technology and manufacturing leadership. The DOE loan is uniquely a very cost-efficient form of capital. As we spent a little bit of time walking through Rivian's broader roadmap, specifically the importance of this 4.5 billion is the funding of Rivian's scaling its operation up to, you know, 515,000 units of overall capacity and the opportunity with that installed capacity base to be free cash flow positive in the future. We'll continue to be opportunistic as it pertains to our capital roadmap beyond the components that I had outlined in the existing $13.6 billion of liquidity and total expected capital that we've outlined today.

Andrew Pisechko: Great. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from George Gianarikas from Canaccord. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

George Gianarikas: Hi everyone. Uh, thank you for taking my questions. So, I know it's early days, but I was wondering if you could please give us any color on R2 order trends and maybe some color on the conversion ratios relative to previous orders. Thank you.

R.J. Scaringe: And George, as you said, it is early days for deliveries, but the signals I'd be looking at are just the reception around the product and how, whether it's expert journalists, you know, automotive journalists or lifestyle journalists or customers that are getting to experience the vehicle, the overall excitement around what we've been able to put together in terms of content, features, packaging—just the overall value proposition—is really resonating. And I'm really pleased with having spent a very large amount of time in the car—it's my daily driver—I couldn't be more pleased with the result of the work that the teams did to make something that's truly remarkable. We had a few journalists say this might be the best vehicle ever made. That's wonderful for the teams to hear and it's really encouraging for us as we get ready to ramp the vehicle.

George Gianarikas: Thank you. And maybe just as a follow-up, I just wanted to confirm that the Gen 3 sensor suite was going to be available later this year on the R2. Thanks.

R.J. Scaringe: That’s correct. Yep. So the Gen 3 autonomy hardware suite, which is both our in-house RAP 1 platform—and so this is our in-house inference platform, 800 TOPS per chip, we have two of those chips in the vehicle so it's extremely powerful. It's a big increase, roughly a 4x increase relative to the NVIDIA-based platform—and then the inclusion of LiDAR as was referenced before along with some other enhancements across the rest of the perception stack.

George Gianarikas: Thanks.

Now we move to Part 2 of Rivian’s Q1 2026 earnings call.

Source: Rivian Investor Relations

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