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Sparks

Rivian Is Having a Normal One

The electric vehicle maker has delivered another 15,500 cars since June. Yet trouble is brewing.

Robinson Meyer •
10/02/2023
A Rivian plant.
Heatmap Illustration/Rivian

After a slow start, production at the electric truck maker Rivian is revving up. The company announced today that it made 16,304 new vehicles in the third quarter of 2023 and delivered about 15,500 of them.

That’s about 2,000 vehicles better than Wall Street analysts were expecting, according to CNBC, and it puts Rivian on target to beat its goal of shipping 52,000 vehicles this year. Rivian’s consumer vehicles — the R1T, a pickup, and R1, a three-row SUV — go for about $80,000 a pop. The company also makes delivery vehicles for Amazon. This quarter, Rivian made all its vehicles in its factory in Normal, Illinois, although it’s received the go-ahead to build a second facility in Georgia.

We won’t learn more about the company’s financials until next month, when it unveils its full quarterly earnings. But just because Rivian is shipping expensive trucks doesn’t mean that it’s making money off them. From April to June, the company lost $30,000 for every vehicle that it sold, The Wall Street Journal reported today, and R.J. Scaringe, its CEO, is now “rushing to slash expenses and slim down operations.” The company made nearly 14,000 vehicles in the second quarter and lost $1.19 billion.

Earlier this year, Scaringe told me that Rivian was still trying to rebound from rolling out its production vehicles amid the pandemic. “I don’t think you could have designed a more complex environment to do that in,” he said. “The supply chain catastrophe that was 2022 was our launching ramp here. And then managing the build-out of a large, 5,000-plus person workforce to produce vehicles in our first plant, in the middle of a pandemic, was also really hard.”

Rivian’s stock fell 2.55% in trading today, while the S&P 500 was essentially flat.

Robinson Meyer profile image

Robinson Meyer

Robinson is the founding executive editor of Heatmap. He was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered climate change, energy, and technology.

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Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/26/2025
Natural gas pipelines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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Sparks

An Emergency Trump-Coded Appeal to Save the Hydrogen Tax Credit

Featuring China, fossil fuels, and data centers.

Emily Pontecorvo •
02/18/2025
The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As Republicans in Congress go hunting for ways to slash spending to carry out President Trump’s agenda, more than 100 energy businesses, trade groups, and advocacy organizations sent a letter to key House and Senate leaders on Tuesday requesting that one particular line item be spared: the hydrogen tax credit.

The tax credit “will serve as a catalyst to propel the United States to global energy dominance,” the letter argues, “while advancing American competitiveness in energy technologies that our adversaries are actively pursuing.” The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association organized the letter, which features signatures from the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, and numerous hydrogen, industrial gas, and chemical companies, among many others. Three out of the seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — the Mid-Atlantic, Heartland, and Pacific Northwest hubs — are also listed.

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Sparks

Why Your Car Insurance Bill Is Making Renewables More Expensive

Core inflation is up, meaning that interest rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon.

Matthew Zeitlin •
02/12/2025
Wind turbines being built.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Fed on Wednesday issued a report showing substantial increases in the price of eggs, used cars, and auto insurance — data that could spell bad news for the renewables economy.

Though some of those factors had already been widely reported on, the overall rise in prices exceeded analysts’ expectations. With overall inflation still elevated — reaching an annual rate of 3%, while “core” inflation, stripping out food and energy, rose to 3.3%, after an unexpectedly sharp 0.4% jump in January alone — any prospect of substantial interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve has dwindled even further.

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