RIVN Stock Continues To Slide On Ramp Concerns For Rivian’s Mass-Market EV

• R2 is Rivian’s lowest-priced vehicle, and the model that management has cast as the path to profitability.
• At Morgan Stanley’s Laguna Conference on Tuesday, CEO RJ Scaringe said the factory is not the bottleneck but the supply chain for R2 ramp. 
• During the company’s last earnings call, management said deliveries would be “weighted towards the fourth quarter as we ramp R2.”

Shares of Rivian Automotive (RIVN) extended a three-day slide on Wednesday after Citigroup initiated coverage with a Neutral rating and an $18 price target earlier this week, citing R2 ramp concerns.

RIVN closed Friday at $16.17 and finished Wednesday at $15.23, leaving the stock down 5% for the week and well below its 52-week high of $22.69.

Citi Puts The R2 Ramp At The Center Of The Thesis

Citi said Rivian has not yet shown it can build vehicles at high volume and that the company’s longer-term case rests on scaling the new R2 midsize SUV.

Citi’s price target, however, implies about 18% upside from the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.

R2 is Rivian’s lowest-priced vehicle, and the model that management has cast as the path to profitability. Customer deliveries began June 9 from a single shift in Normal, Illinois. A second shift is due by the end of September.

After 22,559 first-half deliveries, Rivian guided to 65,000-70,000 vehicles for 2026, including 20,000-25,000 R2s — a pace that requires doubling the second-half run rate.

What Management Has To Say

At Morgan Stanley’s Laguna Conference on Tuesday, CEO RJ Scaringe said the factory is not the bottleneck. “That isn’t actually what’s constraining our ramp-up,” he said. “Our ramp-up is gated by or throttled by the rate at which we ramp up our suppliers.” The plant is “out pretty far in front” of the supply base. “We can only ramp as fast as our slowest ramping supplier.”

The CEO compared the effort to a symphony and said the trouble is often not at Tier 1 vendors. “It’s the Tier 2s and Tier 3s that can be the most challenging.” A single lagging part, he warned, would force everything else down. A second shift remains on track for month-end, timed with parts: “Bringing a second shift on to then not be busy because you don’t have parts is also a challenge.”

On the company's July 30 earnings call, Scaringe said reservation-to-order conversion on the Launch Edition R2 was “meaningfully higher than what we expected,” while calling a first-time launch “complex” and supplier coordination “a key focus.”

Then Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough also warned that launch complexity would again pressure automotive gross profit in the third quarter before scale and fixed-cost leverage help in the fourth. Deliveries, she said, would be “weighted towards the fourth quarter as we ramp R2.”

How Did RIVN Retail Traders React?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around RIVN stock fell from ‘neutral’ to ‘bearish’ over the past 24 hours, while message volume remained at ‘normal’ levels.

A Stocktwits user voiced optimism that high oil prices are pushing car buyers to EV. 

Another user said the rising interest-rate environment will make it hard for the company to survive.

RIVN stock has fallen 23% year-to-date. 

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